AsianFin -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday is weighing wheter he would proceed with the planned in-person meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping after he issued new threat over Beijing’s extra controls on rare earth-related exports.
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Trump in a post on his social media platform Truth Social on Friday threatened to cancel his planned meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so,” Trump wrote. The president on September 19 disclosed he agreed with Xi during a phone call that day that two leaders would meet at the APEC annual meeting in South Korea from October 31 to November 1.
However, Trump later Friday denied the planned meeting with Xi had been dropped. “But I don’t know that we’re going to have it,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “I’m going to be there regardless, so I would assume we might have it.”
Trump also hinted there may be time to ratchet down his new tariff threat. “We’re going to have to see what happens. That’s why I made it Nov. 1,” he said.
In the aforementioned post, Trump specifically slammed China’s move to “impose Export Controls on each and every element of production having to do with Rare Earths, and virtually anything else they can think of, even if it’s not manufactured in China”.
He pointed out the letters China has sent to U.S. to informing the export curbs has many pages long and details “each and every Element that they want to withhold from other Nations.”
Given the fact that China is becoming “very hostile”, Trump in the post vowed to hit China with “a massive increase of Tariffs”, and added many other countermeasures are under serious consideration.
In another post later Friday, Trump announced he would slap 100% tariffs and software export curbs on China.
The United States will impose an additional 100% Tariff on Chinese imports, starting on November 1 or sooner, depending on any further actions or changes taken by China, and export controls on “any and all critical software” will go into effect on November 1, Trump wrote.
Trump described the levies and export controls as retaliatory ones, noting in the post that China is going to “impose large scale Export Controls on virtually every product they make, and some not even made by them, effective on November 1., which is “absolutely unheard of in International Trade.” “It is impossible to believe that China would have taken such an action, but they have, and the rest is History,” he wrote.
The Chinese government on Thursday announced export control measures on items related to superhard materials, rare earth equipment and materials, and batteries, effective on November 8.The move was made to safeguard national security and interests and to uphold international commitments including non-proliferation,China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) announced in two separate statements on its website.
One of the statements, Announcement No. 61 requires foreign entities to apply for a license if they want to export products with certain rare-earth items sourced from China accounting for at least 0.1% of the good’s total value. Technologies and relevant date related to rare earth mining, smelting and separation, metal smelting, magnetic material manufacturing, and rare earth secondary resource recycling, as well as the assembly, debugging, maintenance, repair, and upgrade of related production lines are prohibited from export without permission, according to the announcement.
Export applications for the ultimate purpose of research and development (R&D), and production of 14-nanometer-and-below logic chips, the “brains” of electronic devices, memory chips with 256-layers or more, as well as manufacturing equipment, testing equipment and materials for manufacturing the semiconductors using the aforementioned process, or the R&D of artificial intelligence (AI) with potential military applications, will be subject to approval on a case-by-case basis, per the announcement.
Announcement No. 62 aims to impose restrictions on rare earth-related technologies. Exports of rare earth metals and oxide manufactured outside China yet involving Chinese relevant technologies in the process of rare earth mining, smelting and separation, metal smelting, magnetic material manufacturing, or rare earth secondary resource recycling should not be permitted without the export license.
