Solomon Islands MP frets over China influence as ministers hold key meeting
SYDNEY -- On Wednesday, the third China-Pacific Island Countries Foreign Ministers Meeting will take place in the city of Xiamen, where China will endeavor to further solidify its influence in the strategic region.
Since 2019, Beijing has made particularly significant overtures in the Solomon Islands, from dispatching Chinese police officers to constructing a new stadium for the 2023 Pacific Games. But now, Peter Kenilorea Jr., an independent MP from the Solomon Islands, worries that Beijing is also seeking to control the Honiara government.
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Nikkei Asia
12 minutes ago
- Nikkei Asia
Trump hails US-China deal restoring Geneva truce as 'done'
WASHINGTON/HONG KONG -- A deal to restore Washington's trade truce with Beijing is "done," U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning, saying the two sides have agreed on the resumption of rare-earth supplies from China. "OUR DEAL WITH CHINA IS DONE, SUBJECT TO FINAL APPROVAL WITH PRESIDENT XI AND ME," Trump wrote in all caps, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping. "FULL MAGNETS, AND ANY NECESSARY RARE EARTHS, WILL BE SUPPLIED, UP FRONT, BY CHINA. LIKEWISE, WE WILL PROVIDE TO CHINA WHAT WAS AGREED TO, INCLUDING CHINESE STUDENTS USING OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN GOOD WITH ME!)."
Yomiuri Shimbun
an hour ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Trump Says US Gets Rare Earth Minerals from China and Tariffs on Chinese Goods Will Total 55%
The Associated Press President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after arriving on Air Force One, Tuesday, June 10, 2025, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that China will make it easier for American industry to obtain much-needed needed magnets and rare earth minerals, clearing the way for talks to continue between the world's two biggest economies. In return, Trump said, the U.S. will stop efforts to revoke the visas of Chinese nationals on U.S. college campuses. Trump's comment on social media came after two days of high-level U.S.-China trade talks in London. Details remain scarce. Trump didn't fully spell out what concessions the U.S. made. Beijing has not confirmed what the negotiators agreed to, and Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump himself have yet to sign off on it. What Trump described as a 'deal' is actually less than that: It's a 'framework' meant to set the stage for more substantive talks. And Trump's own comments created confusion about what was happening to his taxes – tariffs — on Chinese imports, generating uncertainty about more than $660 billion in annual trade between the two countries. On social media, Trump declared: 'WE ARE GETTING A TOTAL OF 55% TARIFFS, CHINA IS GETTING 10%. RELATIONSHIP IS EXCELLENT!' But a White House official, who was not authorized to discuss the terms publicly and insisted on anonymity to describe them, said the 55% was not an increase on the previous 30% tariff on China because Trump was including pre-existing tariffs, including some left over from his first term. 'We have no idea what the rules are,' said Rick Woldenberg, CEO of the educational toy company Learning Resources, who is part of a lawsuit challenging Trump's authority to impose the tariffs. In a follow-up social media post, Trump said he and Xi 'are going to work closely together to open up China to American Trade. This would be a great WIN for both countries!!!' The framework emerged late Tuesday in London after intense talks involving U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Rep. Jamieson Greer. Leading the Chinese delegation was Vice Premier He Lifeng. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has deployed tariffs aggressively, seeing them as a way to raise money for the federal government, protect American industries, lure factories back to the United States and pressure other countries into bending to his will. He has imposed baseline 10% tariffs on imports from almost every country on earth after having introduced and then suspended for 90 days bigger tariffs on countries based on the size of U.S. trade deficits last year. To American trading partners and to businesses calculating their import tax bills, the president's mercurial approach to trade policy can be baffling. For example, he recently doubled his steel and aluminum tariffs to 50%, likely increasing costs for U.S. manufacturers and construction companies that rely on the metals as raw materials. Likewise, he threatened a 50% tariff on the European Union under the belief that it would jumpstart talks with the bloc, only to back down as his self-imposed 90-day negotiating period is set to expire around July 9. But his approach to China has been especially bewildering. After imposing a 20% tariff on Chinese imports, the American president quickly upped the ante, raising the levy to 54% to offset what he said were China's unfair trade practices. Then, enraged when China retaliated with tariffs of its own, he increased those levies to a staggering 145%. Beijing counterpunched with 125% tariffs on U.S. imports. Those triple-digit tariffs threatened to effectively end trade between the United States and China, causing a hair-raising selloff in financial markets. At a meeting in Geneva last month, the two countries agreed to back off: America's tariffs went back down to a still-high 30% and China's to 10%. In April, the Chinese announced licensing requirements that slowed the supply of desperately needed rare earth minerals to the United States. Furious about the move, Trump threatened to call off the Geneva arrangement, setting the stage for talks Monday and Tuesday in London. And there the Chinese agreed to speed up the rare earths shipments. The agreement came as an international rights group said that several global brands are among dozens of companies at risk of using forced labor through their Chinese supply chains because they use critical minerals or buy minerals-based products sourced from the far-western Xinjiang region of China. The report by the Netherlands-based Global Rights Compliance says companies including Avon, Walmart, Nescafe, Coca-Cola and Sherwin-Williams may be linked to titanium sourced from Xinjiang, where rights groups allege the Chinese government runs coercive labor practices targeting predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities. Many analysts complained that all the drama hadn't accomplished much. Dan Kritenbrink, who was assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the Biden administration, said the London meeting produced 'a fragile truce.' 'Both sides have now demonstrated that they know where the other's weak points are,' said Kritenbrink, now a partner at the Asia Group. 'They demonstrated that they both have leverage and tools they can use to inflict damage on the other.' The Chinese know that when it comes to rare earths they 'can turn that spigot on and off at will… They really have incredible leverage over the United States in the global economy with rare earths, and they're not afraid to use it.' Still, he welcomed the London ceasefire because 'the alternative is no truce at all, and a supply chain war that threatens not just U.S. and Chinese economies but the global economy as well.' Danny Russel, vice president for international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said Trump's latest pressure campaign on China appeared to 'be ending with a whimper, not a bang.' 'The U.S. found it needed to back off the restrictions it had thought would generate leverage,' he said, 'and in exchange, they get merely a promise by the Chinese to dole out critical minerals a bit more quickly.' Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, dismissed the London truce as 'a handshake deal … It can change at any time.'
Japan Times
2 hours ago
- Japan Times
Deal to get U.S.-China trade truce back on track is done, Trump says
A deal getting the fragile truce in the U.S.-China trade war back on track is done, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, after negotiators from Washington and Beijing agreed on a framework covering tariff rates. The deal also removes Chinese export restrictions on rare earths minerals and allows Chinese students access to U.S. universities. Trump took to his social media platform to offer some of the first details to emerge from two days of marathon talks held in London that had, in the words of U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, put "meat on the bones" of an agreement reached last month in Geneva to ease bilateral retaliatory tariffs that had reached crushing triple-digit levels. "Our deal with China is done, subject to final approval with President Xi and me," Trump said on the Truth Social platform. "Full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China. Likewise, we will provide to China what was agreed to, including Chinese students using our colleges and universities (which has always been good with me!). We are getting a total of 55% tariffs, China is getting 10%." A White House official said the 55% represents the sum of a baseline 10% "reciprocal" tariff Trump has imposed on goods imported from nearly all U.S. trading partners; 20% on all Chinese imports because of punitive measures Trump has imposed on China, Mexico and Canada associated with his accusation that the three facilitate the flow of the opioid fentanyl into the U.S.; and finally preexisting 25% levies on imports from China that were put in place during Trump's first term in the White House. Lutnick said the 55% rate for Chinese imports is now fixed and unalterable. Asked on Wednesday on CNBC if the tariff levels on China would not change, he said: "You can definitely say that." Still, many specifics of the deal and details for how it would be implemented remain unclear. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told U.S. senators that the deal would not reduce U.S. export restrictions on high-end artificial intelligence chips in return for access to Chinese rare earths. "There is no quid pro quo in terms of chips for rare earths," Bessent told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing. China's commerce ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment and more information. Framework for a deal Officials from the two superpowers had gathered at a rushed meeting in London starting on Monday following a call last week between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping that broke a standoff that had developed just weeks after the preliminary deal reached in Geneva that had defused their trade war. The Geneva deal had faltered over China's continued curbs on critical minerals exports, prompting the Trump administration to respond with export controls preventing shipments of semiconductor design software, jet engines for Chinese-made planes and other goods to China. Bessent speaks to members of the media while departing following trade talks at Lancaster House in London on Tuesday. | Bloomberg Lutnick said the agreement reached in London would remove restrictions on Chinese exports of rare earths minerals and magnets and some of the recent U.S. export restrictions "in a balanced way," but did not provide details after the talks concluded around midnight, London time. "We have reached a framework to implement the Geneva consensus and the call between the two presidents," Lutnick said, adding that both sides will now return to present the framework to their respective presidents for approvals. "And if that is approved, we will then implement the framework," he said. In a separate briefing, China's Vice Commerce Minister Li Chenggang also said a trade framework had been reached, in principle, that would be taken back to U.S. and Chinese leaders. 'Back to square one' Trump's shifting tariff policies have roiled global markets, sparked congestion and confusion in major ports, and cost companies tens of billions of dollars in lost sales and higher costs. U.S. stocks drifted lower on Wednesday but have recouped most of the losses suffered earlier in the spring during Trump's wave of tariff announcements. "It's a done deal, according to President Trump, but we haven't seen any details, which is why I think the market is not reacting to it yet. As with just about everything, the devil is in the details," said Oliver Pursche, senior vice president and adviser at Wealthspire Advisors in Westport, Connecticut. The World Bank on Tuesday slashed its global growth forecast for 2025 by four-tenths of a percentage point to 2.3%, saying higher tariffs and heightened uncertainty posed a "significant headwind" for nearly all economies. The U.S.-China deal may keep the Geneva agreement from unraveling over dueling export controls but does little to resolve deep differences over Trump's unilateral tariffs and longstanding U.S. complaints about China's state-led, export-driven economic model. "If China will course correct by upholding its end of the initial trade agreement we outlined in Geneva — and I believe after our talks in London, they will — then the rebalancing of the world's ... two largest economies is possible," Bessent told a separate House of Representatives hearing hours after returning from the London talks. The two sides left Geneva with fundamentally different views of the terms of that agreement and needed to be more specific on required actions, said Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center in Washington. "They are back to square one, but that's much better than square zero," Lipsky added. It was not immediately clear from Trump's comments where things stood regarding the timeline for a more comprehensive deal that had been reached last month in Geneva, a deadline set at that time for Aug. 10.
