Two months after President Donald Trump reached a deal with China to lift restrictions on the supplies of rare earth elements, Beijing continues to restrict those that the U.S. needs to produce its permanent magnets and other products, market participants told Bloomberg on Wednesday.
While Beijing has increased deliveries of finished products — mainly permanent magnets, which retain their properties indefinitely — the U.S. industry remains unable to purchase the inputs required to make those items on its own, a key priority for the Trump administration, according to more than a dozen consumers, producers, government officials and trade experts.
The reduced trade highlights tensions in the relationship between the U.S. and China since Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced an agreement in South Korea on Oct. 30.
The deal included the U.S. cutting tariffs and China vowing to restore rare earth supplies. At the time, Trump said the agreement amounted to the "de facto removal" of a range of limits China had imposed.
By restricting deliveries of raw materials, China is hampering American attempts to build its own industry to process rare earths into magnets, which are used in everything from consumer goods to missile guidance systems.
The Trump administration has made developing domestic production capacity for permanent magnets and other rare earth products a major priority after Beijing spent many years building a global monopoly.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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