Russia and China discuss Ukraine war and ties with the United States
President Vladimir Putin's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in Beijing on Sunday. Lavrov is due to attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's (SCO) foreign ministers in China.
"The parties also discussed relations with the United States and prospects for resolving the Ukrainian crisis," the foreign ministry said.
"The importance of strengthening close coordination between the two countries in the international arena, including in the United Nations and its Security Council, the SCO, BRICS, the G20 and APEC, was emphasized," the ministry said.
China and Russia declared a "no limits" partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing, days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine. Putin has sometimes described China as an "ally".
The U.S. casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat.
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Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
What Trump must now do to force Putin's hand
If Donald Trump is serious about imposing punitive sanctions on Russia, there is one immediate diplomatic move that he could make. He could dispatch an envoy not to Moscow but to Beijing to warn China's leaders that they are only 50 days away from US tariffs of 100 per cent unless they stop buying Russian oil. Xi Jinping might then turn to his junior partner, Vladimir Putin, and suggest that Russia avoids this outcome by agreeing to a ceasefire in Ukraine. But there is no public sign of anything like this happening and the danger remains that after the 50 days have elapsed, Mr Trump will fail to act on his words. The war on Ukraine will go on as before, with Putin escaping the heaviest sanctions that America can enact. We have, after all, been here before. Mr Trump has often criticised Putin's intransigence and threatened more sanctions. On May 29 he said that 'within two weeks we're going to find out whether or not [Putin is] tapping us along'. Two weeks passed with no action. The new 50-day countdown could end in the same way. It remains a remarkable fact that Mr Trump has not imposed a single new sanction on Russia since he regained the White House six months ago. All regimes of this kind are vulnerable to circumvention as the target country finds ways around the restrictions. The only way to respond is by constantly updating and extending the sanctions, closing loopholes as soon as they open. Hence Britain and the EU announce new measures against Russia every few months. But Mr Trump has done nothing since he took office in January 2025, allowing American sanctions to wither on the vine. And now, despite the build-up, there will be nothing for the next 50 days. No wonder the Moscow stock exchange reacted to the president's announcement by rising sharply. Yet markets can be wrong and everything could be different this time. If, as seems possible, Mr Trump now supplies Ukraine with advanced weaponry, including long range missiles capable of striking targets in Russia – and if he allows Kyiv to use them for that purpose – then Putin will know that American policy really has changed. He should by now have realised that Mr Trump is genuinely exasperated by the bone-headed obduracy of Russian diplomacy. Speaking in the Oval Office, the president emphasised how he thought that a peace deal in Ukraine was in sight 'about four times', but 'here we are still talking' and 'it just keeps going on and on'. That would not worry Putin if Mr Trump was inclined to blame Volodymyr Zelensky for the deadlock. But the penny seems to have dropped that Ukraine accepted America's proposed ceasefire as long ago as March 11, while all that Putin has done is fire ever more killer drones and ballistic missiles at Ukraine's cities. In the struggle to influence Mr Trump's perceptions, from which all US policy flows, Putin for the first time, seems to be losing. Mr Trump is no longer inclined to exonerate his Russian counterpart. Putin's own view of Mr Trump's threatened sanctions will soon become clear. If Russia returns to the negotiating table with a modified set of demands, perhaps conceding that it will never gain another inch of Ukrainian territory, then Mr Trump will have succeeded in forcing Putin to change his position. But it remains equally possible that Putin will sit tight and wait for the latest deadline to pass as uneventfully as the last one.
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
US rare earth pricing system is poised to challenge China's dominance
LONDON, July 14 (Reuters) - U.S. efforts to break China's dominance of the rare earths market and to drive investment in its own industry have moved up a gear with a Washington-backed plan to create a separate, higher pricing system. The West has struggled to weaken China's grip on 90% of the supply of rare earths, in part because low prices set in China have removed the incentive for investment elsewhere. Miners in the West have long called for a separate pricing system to help them compete in supplying the rare earths group of 17 metals needed to make super-strong magnets of strategic importance. They are used in military applications such as drone and fighter jets, as well as to power motors in EVs and wind turbines. Under a deal made public last week, the U.S. Department of Defense will guarantee a minimum price for its sole domestic rare earth miner MP Materials (MP.N), opens new tab, at nearly twice the current market level. Las Vegas-based MP already produces mined and processed rare earths and said it expects to start commercial magnet production at its Texas facility around the end of this year. Analysts say the pricing deal, which takes effect immediately, should have global implications - positive for producers, but may increase costs for consumers, such as automakers and in turn their customers. "This benchmark is now a new centre of gravity in the industry that will pull prices up," said Ryan Castilloux, managing director of consultancy Adamas Intelligence. The DoD will pay MP the difference between $110 per kilogram for the two most-popular rare earths and the market price, currently set by China, but if the price rises above $110, the DoD will get 30% of additional profits. Castilloux said other indirect beneficiaries of the pricing system may include companies, such as Belgian chemicals group Solvay ( opens new tab, which launched an expansion in April. "It will give Solvay and others the impetus to command a similar price level. It will give them a floor to stand on, you could say," Castilloux added. While Solvay declined to comment, other rare earth miners, developers and their shareholders welcomed the news. Aclara Resources ( opens new tab is developing rare earths mines in Chile and Brazil, as well as planning a separation plant in the United States. Alvaro Castellon, the company's strategy and development manager, told Reuters the deal added "new strategic paths" for the company. MP Materials, which suffered a net loss of $65.4 million last year largely because of China's low pricing, will build up magnet production at its Texas plant initially to 1,000 metric tons a year, later expanding to 3,000 tons a year. Under last Thursday's deal, the DoD will become its largest shareholder with a 15% stake and MP will construct a second rare earth magnet manufacturing facility in the U.S., eventually adding 7,000 tons per year. In total, production would be 10,000 tons a year - equalling U.S. consumption of magnets in 2024. That does not include, however, the 30,000 tons imported by the United States already installed in assembled products, Adamas consultancy said. It predicts global demand for rare earth permanent magnets will more than double over the next decade to about 607,000 tons, with the U.S. seeing the strongest percentage annual growth rate in coming years at 17%. The world's reliance upon China for much of this demand was brought into focus by China's curbs on its exports as trade negotiations continue between the United States and China. So far Western governments have had little success in trying to help their own industries to compete. Attempts to agree stronger pricing have been confined to piecemeal deals that set premiums for magnets. Dominic Raab, a former deputy prime minister and former foreign secretary for the United Kingdom, said he was not surprised the Trump administration had concluded that tax breaks alone would not create the level of investment required. "The next step is, can they scale it up?" asked Raab, now head of global affairs at Appian Capital Advisory, a private equity firm that invests in mining projects. The $110 level for neodymium and praseodymium, or NdPr, guaranteed by the DoD is slightly above a $75-to-$105 per kg range that consultancy Project Blue reckons would be needed to support enough production to meet demand in coming years. It compares to a current level of about $63. David Merriman of Project Blue said it was unclear how commercial industrial consumers would respond to higher prices and whether it would make them invest in rare earths as they have more diverse supply sources. "Major non-government backed consumers are less likely to follow this same investment pattern, however, as they are not so clearly aligned to a particular regional supply route," he said. A spokesperson for German auto giant Volkswagen ( opens new tab declined to comment on pricing when asked about the DoD floor level but said: "We welcome all efforts to strengthen long-term stability and diversification in global supply chains for critical materials."
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
EU has few cards with Donald Trump, and it's bad at playing them
Donald Trump is treating the European Union like a plaything. Over the past three months, the president has made repeated unilateral threats of tariffs against the bloc, moving deadlines and throwing negotiations into turmoil at the drop of a Truth Social post. The latest skirmish was over the weekend, when Trump derailed hopes of a tentative 'deal' with Brussels negotiators by threatening a sweeping 30 per cent levy on the bloc from August 1. That's down from the 50 per cent he threatened in May but above the 10 per cent minimum that the EU was hoping to land on and which the UK has already secured. • Trump slaps 30% tariff on EU and says trade deficit is 'threat to security' Trump's capriciousness towards the Continent is a reflection of the US's strong negotiating position vis-à-vis the EU, compared to China. The contrast in rhetoric and strategy from the White House on the two trade negotiations is stark. With Beijing, America's subservient dependence on China's raw materials export licences, and the fact that Beijing's mercantilist export model has continued unabashed this year, shows who holds most of the cards in US-China trade negotiations. So much so that the administration was quick to 'celebrate' a Geneva accord with Beijing that, a month on, no one knows the details of. Europe simply doesn't boast anywhere near the negotiating leverage over Trump that China wields. It cannot easily weaponise Americans' love for luxury clothing or German cars, and instead is hampered by economies such as Ireland — an open small trading nation — whose economic fortunes hinge on retaining giant American multinationals on its shores. Ireland would be hit by import taxes in areas like pharmaceuticals, and even more so if Trump's larger threats force 'repatriation' of US multinationals. • Ireland has most to lose if tariffs force companies back to US Europe's messy economic relationship with the US skews the tariff talks odds in favour of the other side. But so does the nature of the EU itself. Of all the US's major trade-negotiation partners, Brussels has been uniquely ill equipped to handle Trump. The bloc has approached the head-to-head with its quintessentially legal and technocratic set of asks just as it would a conventional trade agreement. The past week alone has underlined why the technicalities of tariff levels or goods trade simply don't matter to Trump. He is using tariffs, for example, to beat up the centre-left government of Brazil, which runs a trade surplus with the US, to defend his ally Jair Bolsonaro. The Europeans this month gave up their right to impose a 15 per cent tax on US tech giants, hoping it would help pave the wave for a 10 per cent tariff deal — to no avail. It's little surprise that Bernd Lange, a German MEP and head of the European parliament's trade committee, was incandescent at Trump's 'impertinent slap in the face'. This just isn't how Brussels is used to doing things. • Trump threatens Brazil with 50% tariffs 'over Bolsonaro witch hunt' Member states are also divided about what to do next. Brussels has said it will delay planned counter-tariffs on metals that were due to come into force this week, in order to try and placate Trump. A new round of counter-measures worth €72 billion was agreed by EU trade ministers yesterday, but there is no guarantee they will ever be used. A more aggressive move to prepare ways to hit the US with an anti-coercion instrument has been left in reserve. It's no surprise that Trump keeps moving the goalposts. • Trump's tariff may make normal trade impossible, says EU negotiator A 30 per cent minimum tariff, if it comes into force, would result in a 1.25 per cent hit to the bloc's GDP over the next 18 months, according to figures from Goldman Sachs. The other growing worry for some European companies is the strength of the euro, which has brought complaints from the Continent's exporters and has also depressed earnings valuations for its businesses in recent weeks. This is a 'triple whammy' of hits for some of the most export-oriented firms in the bloc, where trade with the rest of the world accounts for about a fifth of total GDP. The euro has gained 13 per cent against the dollar this year and is about 6 per cent stronger on a trade-weighted basis — a sustained and impressive appreciation for a currency that most thought was heading to below $1.00 at the start of the year. Similar to the 'should we or shouldn't we retaliate against Trump?' issue, Europeans are unsure how to feel about their rapidly strengthening currency. There is a reasonably simple mechanical relationship between a strong exchange rate and variables such as inflation. A rough rule of thumb for the euro is that a 1 per cent trade-weighted appreciation will lower average consumer prices by about 0.1 per cent. The pass-through is usually even higher when the euro's strength is down to 'external' factors — such as worries about the dollar — rather than internal factors such as improved growth. This means the eurozone's inflation target of 2 per cent is almost certain to undershoot to about 1.6 per cent next year and could fall even further in 2027. The European Central Bank will then find itself in the familiar position of having to cut interest rates to ultra-low levels to stimulate price growth — much as it has done for the past decade with the exception of 2022-2023. But the ECB and its president, Christine Lagarde, have also made it clear that they think the world is entering a 'global euro moment' where the single currency can benefit from the dollar's sustained decline and worries over its reserve status. This is an unusually pointed political intervention by the ECB, which has been historically 'neutral' on the reserve status of the euro. Previously, it has been the European Commission that has pushed the 'internationalisation' of the euro as an explicit stated aim — despite having no tools at its disposal to achieve this. A number of factors need to be in place before the euro can play a role anything like the dollar in the world's financial system; a likely eurozone safe asset through commonly issued debt is one of them. A reserve currency is also a strong, rather than undervalued one. The ECB should be careful what it wishes for.
