Trump calls off potential meeting with China’s Xi amid rare earths dispute

President Donald Trump has halted efforts to rearrange a gathering with President Xi Jinping after China tightened export controls on uncommon earth minerals this week.

“Some very unusual issues are occurring in China!” Trump wrote on Fact Social. “They’re changing into very hostile and sending letters to nations all over the world saying they need to impose export controls on each a part of manufacturing that entails uncommon earths, and on just about something they’ll consider, even when it isn’t made in China.”

“We have by no means seen something like this,” Trump added.

“One of many coverage measures we’re presently calculating is an enormous enhance in tariffs on Chinese language merchandise getting into the US of America. There are lots of different countermeasures which are additionally being severely thought of.”

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Trump canceled plans for a doable assembly with Xi after China moved this week to tighten export controls on uncommon earth minerals. (Pedro Pardo – Pool/Getty Pictures; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Pictures)

The president mentioned his relationship with China has been “excellent” over the previous six months and referred to as the crackdown on exports “stunning.”

“I at all times felt like they had been lurking, and now, as regular, I have been confirmed proper!” he added.

The administration had recommended that Trump might meet Xi later this month on the Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation summit in South Korea, however “now there would not appear to be a purpose to try this,” he mentioned.

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In latest a long time, China has gained a dominant place within the uncommon earth metals and magnets industries and is now utilizing that management – essential for electronics worldwide – as political leverage.

“Some very unusual issues are occurring in China!” Trump wrote on Fact Social. “They’re changing into very hostile and sending letters to nations all over the world saying they need to impose export controls on each a part of manufacturing that entails uncommon earths, and on just about something they’ll consider, even when it isn’t made in China.” (Reuters)

“There isn’t any method that China ought to be allowed to carry the world ‘captive,’ however that appears to have been their plan for fairly a while, beginning with the ‘magnets’ and different components they’ve quietly assembled in a considerably monopoly place, a somewhat sinister and hostile transfer, to say the least,” Trump added.

The world’s two largest economies have been locked in commerce talks for months, imposing tit-for-tat tariffs on one another.

China introduced Thursday that it’s going to increase export controls on 5 extra uncommon earth metals – holmium, erbium, thulium, europium and ytterbium – along with the seven that had been restricted in April.

China additionally restricted exports of know-how used to refine uncommon earth metals.

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China cracked down on the export of 5 extra minerals on Thursday. (Sergei Bobylev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photograph through AP)

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China cited nationwide safety issues over the restrictions. “Uncommon earth metals have dual-use properties for each civilian and navy functions. Implementing export controls on them is a global follow,” a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce mentioned.

Uncommon earth metals are important for each industrial items – together with electrical automobiles, residence home equipment, lithium batteries and digital camera lenses – and essential to the US protection trade.

Uncommon earth metals are additionally used to provide semiconductors which are important for synthetic intelligence processing.

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In accordance with the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research, China will mine about 60 p.c of the world’s uncommon earth minerals by 2024 and course of nearly 90 p.c.

The Trump administration has invested closely in home uncommon earth mining and processing to scale back U.S. dependence on China.