Trump threatens massive tariffs as China restricts rare earth exports

President Trump announced Friday that he would not meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a planned trip to South Korea later in the month, citing what he called China's hostile moves in restricting rare earth exports. The decision came after Beijing announced new controls requiring foreign companies to obtain special approval before shipping rare earth elements—metallic materials essential to American electronics, computer chips, lasers, jet engines, and military systems. China also said it would reject any export requests for technologies used in mining, smelting, or recycling rare earths if those technologies could be used in military applications.

In response, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was considering a "massive increase" in tariffs on Chinese products entering the United States, alongside other unspecified countermeasures still under review. The threat came as the two countries have been locked in an escalating trade dispute that earlier this year spiraled into tariff rates so punishing they effectively froze bilateral commerce. The U.S. had imposed 145% tariffs on Chinese goods while China responded with 125% tariffs on American products—rates so extreme they functioned as near-total trade blockades.

Negotiations in Switzerland and the United Kingdom had brought those rates down substantially: the U.S. tariff fell to 30% and China's to 10%, creating what analysts called a tariff truce. But the underlying tensions never fully resolved. Disagreements persist over American access to rare earths, U.S. restrictions on China's imports of advanced computer chips, Chinese purchases of American soybeans, and port fees both countries have begun levying on each other starting Tuesday. China's latest move on rare earth exports reopened the wound.

Trump characterized the timing as particularly galling, noting it came just as a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was being announced—a development he claimed credit for brokering. He suggested without evidence that China had deliberately timed its export restrictions to overshadow his diplomatic achievement, posting on social media: "I wonder if that timing was coincidental?" He also said China was "becoming very hostile" and holding the world "captive" through its control of rare earth materials.

Analysts offered competing interpretations of what Trump's threat actually signaled. Cole McFaul, a research fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, suggested Trump was positioning himself for fresh negotiations, operating from the assumption that China had overreached. From Beijing's perspective, however, the situation looked different. McFaul noted that Chinese officials believed they had successfully extracted concessions in previous talks and felt confident in their ability to manage the Trump administration.

Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, warned that Trump's posts could mark "the beginning of the end of the tariff truce" that had brought temporary relief from the trade war's most destructive phases. He described the current moment as one where both nations were simultaneously reaching for economic weapons, with neither side showing willingness to step back. "Mutually assured disruption between the two sides is no longer a metaphor," Singleton said.

The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China noted that Beijing's previous rounds of rare earth export controls had already created a backlog of pending license applications. The new restrictions would only deepen the complexity facing companies trying to source these materials globally. What remained unclear was whether Trump's threat represented genuine escalation or a negotiating tactic—whether the coming weeks would bring a return to the punishing tariff rates of earlier this year or a path back to the negotiating table. The answer would shape not just U.S.-China relations but the stability of global supply chains that depend on both nations' cooperation.