Analysis
Xi Comes to Washington Armed With a Rare-Earth Card
Trump still doesn’t have an answer to China’s leverage.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with U.S. President Donald Trump this week for a high-stakes summit, he’ll be armed with a powerful card: rare earths.
Rare earths have loomed over the U.S.-China relationship since at least April 2025, after Trump unveiled punishing tariffs against much of the world. China retaliated in part by unleashing its own rare-earth trade restrictions, laying the groundwork for several rounds of negotiations and other trade escalations before both sides agreed to a one-year trade truce that expires in November.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with U.S. President Donald Trump this week for a high-stakes summit, he’ll be armed with a powerful card: rare earths.
Rare earths have loomed over the U.S.-China relationship since at least April 2025, after Trump unveiled punishing tariffs against much of the world. China retaliated in part by unleashing its own rare-earth trade restrictions, laying the groundwork for several rounds of negotiations and other trade escalations before both sides agreed to a one-year trade truce that expires in November.
In the months since, the Trump administration has waged an aggressive campaign to slash Washington’s mineral vulnerabilities at the same time as Chinese rare-earth flows have fluctuated. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has said China only gets a “passing grade” on its rare-earth exports, and Chinese shipments of rare-earth magnets to the United States dropped again in August, underscoring just how vulnerable Washington remains.
As the two leaders gear up for their highly anticipated meeting—which could touch on issues including artificial intelligence and Taiwan—Trump still doesn’t appear to have much of an answer to China’s rare-earth card.
“The U.S. is unhappy about the flow of rare earths, but they’re also concerned about doing anything that may shut that off,” Jennifer Welch, the chief geoeconomics analyst at Bloomberg Economics and a former National Security Council (NSC) director for China and Taiwan under the Biden and Trump administrations, said during a briefing on Tuesday.
Ahead of the meeting, analysts’ expectations of potential outcomes are limited, and experts who spoke to Foreign Policy said both parties believe a truce extension is in their interest.
“Neither side wants to blow this up,” said Cory Combs, the head of critical mineral and supply chain research at Trivium China, a strategic advisory firm.
Yet even with an extension, China’s rare-earth leverage is set to loom over its trade relationship with the United States for years to come. According to Bloomberg Economics, China is estimated to continue dominating rare-earth supply chains until at least 2030, from mining to the stages of separation and magnet production.
“Despite all of the investments, all of the deals that the Trump administration has announced since last April, the dependence remains,” said Chris Kennedy, a former NSC director for international economics under the Biden and Trump administrations, who was at the same briefing. Even if all the announced projects deliver on schedule, Washington’s dependence will likely persist until the early to mid-2030s, he added.
U.S. dependence on Chinese rare-earth supply chains is extensive, as there is substantial intermingling with Chinese goods at every stage of production, said Kennedy, who is now the lead for economic statecraft at Bloomberg Economics. For example, a lot of the magnet production outside China is in Japan, which still relies on Chinese inputs and technology, he said.
“All of those dependencies will need to be unwound,” Kennedy said, adding that he expects there to be an extension of the truce.
Read More
-
Massive industrial bulldozers are seen near mounds of deep rust-colored soil next to a docked ship. Massive industrial bulldozers are seen near mounds of deep rust-colored soil next to a docked ship. Ditching Chinese Rare Earths Is Hard. Just Ask Japan.
A cautionary tale for Washington’s diversification push.
-
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping pose for photos at Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing. U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping pose for photos at Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing. Trump and Xi Won’t Find Common Ground on AI Safety
The leaders have fundamentally different ideas about the technology and how to regulate it.
In the run-up to the summit, Greer has suggested that Washington could support a three-to-six-month truce extension.
Beyond economics, Washington’s rare-earth gaps also have major military implications. Trump and Xi’s meeting comes as the Iran war has blown through U.S. supplies of critical munitions, further exposing the U.S. defense sector’s reliance on rare earths and other critical minerals and metals. In July, Trump urged defense executives to expedite weapons production and ramp up their manufacturing capacity, telling them that “we need a little more speed.”
Washington has also ordered U.S. defense contractors to stop sourcing rare earths and certain other minerals from China by Jan. 1, although some defense companies are reportedly scrambling to do so on that timeline.
“Given the war in Iran, there’s a greater demand from the U.S. defense sector now to rebuild munitions stockpiles,” Kennedy said. “Those dependencies are expected to remain.”
Maxine Davey contributed graphics research.
Christina Lu is a staff writer at Foreign Policy. Bluesky: @christinalu.bsky.social X: @christinafei
Stories Readers Liked
-
A statue of a seated, bearded man with a bare torso and draped cloth around his waist, holding a scroll in one hand, positioned in front of a row of large classical columns. -
An illustration of Donald Trump in a blue suit and long red tie gesturing with open hands in front of a grid patterned background with jagged red, blue, and black line graphs diving downward. -
Five people sit in folding chairs pushed up against a wall, all of them on their phones and several looking board. Text on the wall behind them says “AI for Real” with images of robotic arms and household appliances printed around it. -
An illustration depicting a man submerged up to his nose in water. The wavy water is divided horizontally into three color bands that mimic a flag: white foam at the very top peaks, a deep blue middle section filled with bubbles, and a red lower section covering his neck and suit jacket. His blue eyes look upward with a wide, strained expression. -
Negotiators from the United States, Canada, and five European countries converse after finishing the draft of the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington on March 18, 1949. -
A woman crosses a road in front of a mural depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kashira, Russia, southeast of Moscow, on Oct. 16, 2017. -
An illustration of a vintage-style map featuring North America and parts of Europe and Africa. Overlaid on the map are 3D red brick walls shaped exactly like the borders of the contiguous United States and Alaska, casting long shadows to the right. -
A creative illustration against a pale yellow background showing a garden planter containing a dense green hedge. Five human arms emerge from the hedge, with four of the hands holding small flags of China, Russia, the United States, and the European Union, while the fifth hand holds the flag of India. -
An illustration showing a pair of hands tightly wringing out an American flag. Water droplets shaped like missiles squeeze out of the twisted fabric and fall toward a puddle shaped like the map of Iran on a red background. -
An aerial photo shows Doha in the booming petrostate of Qatar.
The U.S. and China
-
A line of Chinese youth wearing white pants and blue long-sleeved shirts are seen from the waist down with U.S. and Chinese flags in their hands. -
Leaders of Pacific Islands nations pose for the family photo at the Pacific Islands Forum summit in Honiara, Solomon Islands, on September 11, 2025. -
Five people sit in folding chairs pushed up against a wall, all of them on their phones and several looking board. Text on the wall behind them says “AI for Real” with images of robotic arms and household appliances printed around it.
