Industrial Policy for the Battery Age
Lessons from China, Indonesia, and Morocco
This report examines how China, Indonesia, and Morocco use industrial policy to develop electric vehicle (EV) battery value chains. It analyzes strategies across mining, processing, battery manufacturing, and EV production, highlighting economic opportunities, trade impacts, investment trends, sustainability concerns, and implications for global trade governance and green industrial policy.
Key Messages
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China, Indonesia, and Morocco use different industrial policy models to strengthen their positions in EV battery value chains through subsidies, local content rules, investment incentives, infrastructure, and value chain integration.
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While battery industrial policies can support economic growth, EV adoption, and green transitions, they also create challenges, including overcapacity, trade tensions, environmental damage, labour concerns, and policy coordination gaps.
Industrial policy is now a fact of life for national policy-makers worldwide. A recent World Bank report characterized industrial policy as “back with a vengeance.” Indeed, it can be argued that it was never “gone” but rather was quietly practised by most economies, even during the years when it was officially out of fashion.
The case countries considered in this report are China, Indonesia, and Morocco. The report starts with China, as an example of a coordinated suite of policies that has managed to capture global market share along the entire value chain. The Indonesian case offers insight into the difficulties of such an approach—Indonesia’s policies have been highly successful in fostering investment in the downstream processing of battery-grade nickel, but face challenges in moving further into battery or EV manufacturing. Morocco’s case starts with similar ambitions of vertically integrated production, building on existing strengths from mining to manufacturing, but is still in early stages.
Participating experts
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