Critical minerals top new U.S.-China trade deal, Trump officials say – National

Washington and Beijing signed a trade An agreement that will allow American companies to more easily obtain magnets and minerals of rare land from China which are essential for the manufacture and production of micropuits, SCOTT BESSENT, secretary of the American treasury on Friday.

The agreement comes after China retaliated against the steep import prices imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese goods and has moved to the slow export of minerals and rare earth magnets and much necessary magnets by American industrial interests.

Bessent said on “Mornings With Maria” by Fox Business Network that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping “had a phone call” before “then our teams met in London, resolved this, and I am now convinced that we love them, the magnets will flow.”

“Part of the agreement was that the prices went down and the magnets of rare earths starting to return to the United States,” said Bessent. “They formed the heart of a large part of our industrial base. They did not run as fast as before. ”

His comments follow the president Donald Trump Announced two weeks earlier an agreement with China which, according to him, would facilitate the export of magnets and minerals of rare earths.

This pact paid the way for the continuation of commercial talks. The United States previously suspended certain critical American technology sales in China such as the components used for jet engines and semiconductors. He also agreed to stop trying to revoke the visas of Chinese nationals on American university campuses.

Bessent added critical mineral exports: “What we see here is a de -escalation.”

Commerce secretary Howard Lunick told Bloomberg TV that the agreement had been signed earlier this week.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said on Friday that the two parties had “also confirmed the details of the executive”, when he answered a question on the question of whether China was to accelerate rare land exports to the United States and if the United States had to delete certain restrictions on China.

“China, in accordance with the law, will examine and approve the export requests eligible for controlled articles. In turn, the United States will lift a series of restrictive measures that it had imposed on China,” said the ministry.

The first talks in Geneva in early May led the two parties to postpone massive tariff hikes which threatened to freeze a lot of trade between the two countries. The subsequent talks in London established a framework for negotiations and the agreement mentioned by Trump seemed to formalize this agreement – preparing the way for Bessent’s comments on Friday.

In London, mineral export controls overshadowed the prices in trade negotiations after China has imposed permitted requirements on seven rare elements, according to a Chinese law that applies to all exports, not only to those for the American market.

The authorization process taking 45 days, the new requirement caused a break in expeditions, threatening to disrupt the production of cars, robots, wind turbines and other high-tech products in the United States and worldwide. The United States, on the other hand, has taken restrictive measures on high-tech exports to China.

According to the latest agreement, China does not remove the requirement for authorization on rare earths but retains the flexibility to compose or descend the approval process if necessary.

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Sun Yun, director of the Chinese program of the Think Tank Center, based in Washington, said that Beijing has only tightened its global policy on rare lands, but has discretion on how to implement it. “It’s Chinese style,” she said. “If everything goes well, the permit occurs. If things are happening in the wrong direction, like the sales of arms in Taiwan, permits have disappeared with the wind. ”

China has also taken action recently on the fentanyl issue, announcing last week that it would designate two other substances as precursor chemicals for fentanyl, making them subject to production, transport and export regulations. Trump demanded that Beijing do more to stop the flow of such precursor ingredients to Mexican drug cartels, which use them to make fentanyl for sale in the United States, he imposed 20% prices on Chinese imports on the fentanyl problem, most of the current taxes of 30% between Chinese goods.

The agreement concluded in May in Geneva called on both parties to reduce the punitive pricing increases imposed while Trump degenerated his trade war and greatly increased his import rights. Some higher rates, such as those imposed by Washington linked to fentanyl trade and aluminum and steel tasks, remain in place.

Quick changing policies are wreaking havoc on the two largest economies in the world.

The American economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.5% from January to March, in part because imports increased while businesses and households rushed to buy foreign goods before Trump could impose prices there.

In China, factory benefits have flowed more than 9% compared to the previous year in May, car manufacturers suffering from a large part of this drop. They dropped more than 1% from one year to the next in January-May.

Trump and other US officials said they expected to conclude trade agreements with many other countries, including India.

“We are going to have an agreement after agreement after agreement,” said Libnick.

Weisset reported Washington. The author of the Associated Press Didi Tang contributed to Washington.

& Copy 2025 the Canadian press