U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Wednesday that China’s recent restrictions on rare-earth mineral exports are a “global supply chain power grab.”
Greer and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke to reporters at the Treasury Department in Washington, where Bessent said Beijing’s actions amounted to a provocation.
The remarks were the latest sign that the U.S.-China trade relationship continues to deteriorate after Beijing’s surprise announcement Thursday of new limits on rare-earth minerals and related technologies.
In response, President Donald Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on China, as well as export controls on “any and all critical software.”
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday that the export controls were consistent with international practice and had been implemented “to better safeguard world peace and regional stability, and fulfill non-proliferation and other international obligations.”
“China’s position has been consistent and clear. It is the U.S. who asks for talks while threatening high tariffs and new restrictions,” spokesperson Lin Jian said at a regular news briefing in Beijing. “This is not the right way to deal with China.”
The only way China can avoid the new tariffs, Greer told NBC News, is to drop the proposed export controls.
Bessent and Greer were cautiously optimistic that Beijing would back down and return to the negotiating table.
“Our expectation is that they won’t implement [the controls] and that we’ll be able to be back to where we were a week ago,” Greer said, “where we had the tariff levels we’ve agreed to and we have the flow of rare-earth magnets we agreed to.”
In the meantime, Bessent said, Washington is conferring with its allied trade partners about a unified response to the restrictions. “This is China vs. the world,” he said. “We and our allies will neither be commanded, nor controlled.”
Rare-earth minerals are critical to manufacturing a wide variety of products, such as batteries, electric vehicles, household goods, TVs and smartphones and solar panels.
After three rounds of what the officials called successful trade talks, China also has yet to officially approve the sale of TikTok U.S. and has not bought any soybeans from American farmers since May.
Nonetheless, Greer and Bessent said the current 90-day pause on tariffs with China — renewed at least three times so far — could be re-upped again for a longer interval if China lifts the rare-earths restrictions.
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