Switzerland + japan and now PRC, i.e. US also can't build ballpoint pen tips (not that US couldn't). The TLDR is it's like a 20m per year market, TISCO china has revenue of 15B, it wasn't worth rounding error effort until politics compelled them to. And even then it wasn't really about metallurgy but submicro tungsten manufacturing to close precision gap for other strategic industries. The meme/rumor is TISCO made one batch of ball point tip metal to prove a point and that chunk is enough to last PRC ballpoint tip industry for decades.