Ok so I idd some digging and bloomberg is light on analysis on this one.

The graph that got me wondering as to why the price has spiked was the mined/produced tonnes of tungsten from what I can see.

I naturally assumed, like the article is hinting, that demand has risen significantly.

It appears that china has limited exports and the USA has demanded that military applications needs to be sourced for people they like, rather than china russia and north korea. Demand has apparently increased by about 4%, but that doesn't explain the 10x price jump.

All I know is my carbide tooling is going to cost a shitload more now.