America And Rare Earths: A Little Urgency, Please

2025-06-16 08:09:08

(MENAFN- Asia Times) America usually has other countries over a barrel. Not the other way around – unless you're old enough to remember when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cracked the whip and Washington and the West usually fell in line.

But last week China forced President Trump to back down on tough tariffs that were hurting the PRC.

Why the retreat?

Rare earth minerals. They're nearly all sourced from China and Beijing choked off exports.

Major American companies – car makers for example – warned Trump they'd have to curtail or shut down operations in a matter of weeks.

That's never good for an incumbent party's political prospects.

The Trump administration reduced tariffs in exchange for Beijing's sort-of agreement to allow rare earth exports to US customers.

How much and how fast is unknown – but expect the PRC to slow-roll this and squeeze all it can – such as sensitive business data – from its customers.

At best, this is a temporary reprieve.

The US side also agreed to drop plans to ban Chinese students from US universities.

One also suspects a quiet agreement to relax US controls on semiconductor and AI-related technology exports to China.

US tariffs remain at 55%, but that's much lower than the 145% originally imposed. And the PRC probably can handle that level.

There's still a 20%“fentanyl tariff” imposed for Chinese-origin fentanyl that has killed well over 500,000 Americans over the last decade.

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