Trump threatens economic retaliation on China amid escalating dispute over critical rare earths

Trump threatens economic retaliation on China amid escalating dispute over critical rare earths

President Donald Trump blasted Chinese leader Xi Jinping on social media over China’s ramped-up efforts to impose export controls on critical rare earths, threatening economic retaliation and saying he no longer sees any reason to meet with Xi during a scheduled visit to the region later this month.

“Some very strange things are happening in China! They are becoming very hostile, and sending letters to Countries throughout the World, that they want to impose Export Controls on each and every element of production having to do with Rare Earths, and virtually anything else they can think of, even if it’s not manufactured in China,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Nobody has ever seen anything like this but, essentially, it would ‘clog’ the Markets, and make life difficult for virtually every Country in the World, especially for China.”

Trump also threatened economic penalties against China, warning, “Dependent on what China says about the hostile ‘order’ that they have just put out, I will be forced, as President of the United States of America, to financially counter their move.”

“For every Element that they have been able to monopolize, we have two,” he added.
Beijing ramped up sweeping restrictions on rare earth exports on Thursday, expanding the list of minerals under control and extending controls targeting their production technologies and their overseas use, including for military and semiconductor applications. The actions targeted an acute vulnerability for the US – one that has driven a significant Trump administration effort in recent months to identify, and rapidly scale up, mining and production capacity. And it immediately set off alarm bells inside the Trump administration, according to several administration officials.

The move came as Beijing has sought to boost its leverage in trade talks with the United States and ahead of an expected meeting between Xi and Trump on the sidelines of the APEC summit in South Korea later this month. Some administration officials saw it as a clear effort by Xi to secure leverage ahead of his planned face-to-face meeting with Trump, while others pointed to US export control actions that may have triggered a Chinese response.

CNN has reached out to the White House for clarity on if the president’s meeting with Xi is officially canceled.

“I have not spoken to President Xi because there was no reason to do so,” Trump wrote. “This was a real surprise, not only to me, but to all the Leaders of the Free World. I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so.”
White House officials viewed China’s move this week as a dramatic escalation that could threaten the meeting even before Trump took to social media to publicly make the threat, according to a senior administration official and a source familiar with the matter. But there are also private frustrations at the White House after the US Commerce Department expanded the number of Chinese firms on an export controls backlist late last month that could have frustrated China, sources said.

China had invited Trump to visit Beijing while he was on his trip to Asia later this month but without any clear deliverables the Trump administration turned down the invitation, according to the senior administration official. They had agreed to work toward a meeting on the sidelines of the economic summit.

Trump on Friday also slammed China for choosing to announce the steps Thursday, suggesting doing so minimized his attempts to secure a peace deal between Israel and Hamas.

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