As the U.S.-China trade war continues to heat up, China’s latest move was to make a veiled threat to ban or limit exports of rare-earth elements to the U.S. This is being considered as one of several answers to the Trump Administration’s decision to increase tariffs on Chinese goods and blacklist Chinese telecom Huawei.
Rare-earth elements are used in LED and conventional lighting as well as by numerous other industries such as energy, defense, transportation, aviation, communications, and more. The U.S. gets 80% of its rare-earth elements from China, which holds some 30% of the world’s reserves and is the biggest producer.
Right now, a ban or curb on exports is an idea being floated in Chinese state media, with another ominous signal being a visit by the Chinese president to a factory in the country’s rare-earth industrial region, where he called for a “Long March” in the trade war with the United States.
Foreign Policy has the story here. Bloomberg has it here.
