By Daniel Gros
BRUSSELS – In a face-to-face meeting last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump reached a truce in their countries’ long-running trade war. Trump lowered tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for the rollback of Chinese export controls on rare earths. Many have depicted the deal as a victory for China: by raising the specter of a rare-earth supply shortage, Xi forced the US to make concessions on tariffs. But a closer look at the numbers suggests that China is not the rare-earth juggernaut it might seem to be.
Rare earths are essential to the manufacture of many high-tech products, from smartphones to fighter jets, and at first glance, China appears to have a near-monopoly on them, accounting for more than 70% of the United States’ rare-earth imports.
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