Trump cornered as China weaponises its rare-earths dominance

Telegraph

3 days ago

When or if Donald Trump gets on the phone with Xi Jinping, the tone between the two men is likely to be frosty.
The US and China have in recent days both accused each other of violating their fragile, three-week-old trade truce. The two presidents are expected to speak this week in an effort to rescue the deal.
But Trump has a tough pill to swallow: it is his arch-rival who looks to have the better negotiating hand.
China's near-total dominance of the world's supply of rare-earth metals – which are used in the manufacture of everything from cars and computer chips to F-35 fighter jets and nuclear-powered submarines – means Xi can squeeze the US where it hurts.
'Critical minerals are one of the most important bargaining chips for China in its negotiations with Washington. China will really hold on to this, as a significant point of leverage,' says Matilda Buchan, a senior analyst at Asia House, a London think tank.
Beijing's willingness to weaponise the rare-earths supply chain is so potent a threat to the US economy and military that it has already pushed the White House into de-escalating its planned trade war with China.
After Trump's April 2 'liberation day' announcement raised tariffs on US imports from China to an eventual peak of 145pc, Beijing's retaliation included a ban on exports to the US of magnet alloys containing key rare-earth materials.
The impact was quickly felt. On May 9, some of the biggest carmakers in the US – including General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai – wrote to the White House warning that unless China's export ban was lifted, they would soon have to start cutting back production.
That same day, Trump told his Truth Social followers that he was ready to make big concessions to get a deal with China. Negotiations in Geneva took place over the ensuing weekend, and the tariffs came tumbling down.
It emerged, more quietly, in subsequent days that China would allow rare-earths exports to the US to resume.
'Major disruption'
Last Friday, though, Trump was back on Truth Social claiming that China had 'TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US'.
Jamieson Greer, the president's trade envoy, told CNBC that Beijing was 'slow-rolling' its issuance of licences to export products containing rare earths.
'We haven't seen the flow of some of those critical minerals as they were supposed to be doing,' he said.
The question is whether China is actively frustrating the deal, as some White House officials reportedly suspect, or whether the explanation is more mundane: not a grand conspiracy but simply a system coming to grips with new red tape.
Back in April, Beijing did not just slap a ban on exports, it built a new bureaucratic structure to underpin future rare-earths trade.
China-based companies wanting to export metal alloys containing more than a trace of seven key rare earths – samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, yttrium and scandium – now need to apply for a licence from the commerce ministry.
It was not initially clear which shipments would be caught by the new rules, and there was plenty of precautionary laboratory testing, even of exports that were below the rare-earth content threshold.
'What initially looked like an almost total freezing of exports from China was really just a response to this need for testing of all the material, and of any material which contained more than 0.1pc of any of these elements,' says David Merriman, the research director at Project Blue, a critical minerals analysis and advisory firm.
Project Blue's analysis suggests the application process is taking about 45 days, which may explain why exports to the US have been slower than expected.
By mid-May, six large companies had received export licences, and at least another three were in the process of doing so.
'We are seeing some approvals come through, certainly slower than industry would like,' Michael Hart, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, told Bloomberg this week.
'Some of the delay is related to China working through their new system to approve exports, not that they are not allowing exports.'
As part of the Geneva trade deal between the US and China, the commerce ministry has taken 28 US businesses off its export-control blacklist. But exports will still have to be approved on a shipment-by-shipment basis, and none is so far bound for the US.
Volkswagen's European operations appear to have been an early beneficiary of an export licence, but not in sufficient quantities to ease supply concerns.
'There are a few approvals coming through, but they are far from being sufficient to prevent imminent production halts,' Jens Eskelund, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, told the New York Times.
'We are still facing a major disruption of supply chains.'
Trump cornered
The threat of factory production lines grinding to a halt highlights the immense power of China in this crucial market, and the power of its hand in negotiations.
China's mines churn out about 61pc of the world's rare earths, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Chinese refiners and manufacturers also hoover up most of the rare earths from elsewhere, processing 92pc of the world's supply.
It is refining that is key, as this is the process that turns the material into a usable product.
The country has a particular stranglehold on the manufacture of magnet alloys containing rare earths, which have near-ubiquitous application in computing, vehicular and electrical systems.
'Particularly as you move further down the supply chain, from mined products towards downstream highly engineered products, China's market share only grows,' Merriman says. 'Its grip only gets tighter.'
Rare earths are used in very small quantities, which means it has long been uneconomic for most countries to mine or refine them – most, that is, except China, where the industry is under state control.
The US has been spearheading sporadic efforts to restart rare-earths production and magnet manufacture either at home or in friendlier countries. But these efforts are yet to bear real fruit. The IEA estimates that a decade from now, China will still account for 85pc of refined rare-earths output.
This leaves Trump cornered. He has been talking up the prospects of Ukraine and Greenland as alternatives, but his presidency will be long gone before either of those becomes a realistic option. Tariffs are no use here either.
His only weapon is semiconductors. Over the past month, the US has been gradually tightening controls over China-bound exports of chips and associated software, particularly those used in artificial intelligence.
The chips squeeze is partly motivated by the White House's long-term strategic desire to retain technological supremacy over China. But it also has some immediate tactical trade leverage – as Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, admitted on Sunday.
'[We are] taking certain actions to show them [the Chinese] what it feels like on the other side of that [export ban] equation,' he told Fox News.
This has riled Beijing. 'The United States has unilaterally provoked new economic and trade frictions,' the Chinese commerce industry said in a statement on Monday. 'These practices seriously violate the consensus.'
Despite the war of words, Lutnick claimed he was confident that Trump would 'work it out' with Xi.
Perhaps his confidence is well-founded. With the US and Chinese tech and manufacturing industries hanging in the balance, a deal looks essential for both sides.