Understanding international trade network complexity of platinum: The case of Japan

In recent decades, platinum-group metals have become increasingly important to the development and diffusion of cleaner technologies being developed to achieve a “low carbon” society. Countries engaged in the development and diffusion of new energy technologies are concerned about steadily importing scarce rare metals. Nevertheless, the question of what kind of competitive relationships exist among demand countries is not well addressed. This study focused on platinum primary product used to produce greener products like next-generation vehicles and analyzed the international trade network complexity of the platinum primary product using the clustering method. From the results, we found that (1) there exit well-separated nine trade clusters (i.e., trade networks with higher exchanges) in the international trade network of 2005, (2) the group including South Africa and the group consisting of Western countries together account for approximately half the total international trade flow in platinum primary products, and (3) international coordination of purchases and sales of platinum among relevant trade partners in the identified largest cluster: South Africa, Russia, Japan, China, Hong Kong, and Switzerland is crucial in securing the stable supply and demand for platinum.