US says it reaches understanding to expedite rare earth exports from China
A White House official stated late Thursday that the United States (US) has reached an understanding with China on how to expedite rare earth shipments to the US, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“The administration and China agreed to an additional understanding for a framework to implement the Geneva agreement,” a White House official said.
The official said that the understanding is “about how we can implement expediting rare earth shipments to the US again.”
Bloomberg cited US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as saying, "They're going to deliver rare earths to us" and "we'll take down our countermeasures."
Market reaction
At the time of writing, the AUD/USD pair is trading around 0.6545, down 0.01% on the day.
US-China Trade War FAQs
Generally speaking, a trade war is an economic conflict between two or more countries due to extreme protectionism on one end. It implies the creation of trade barriers, such as tariffs, which result in counter-barriers, escalating import costs, and hence the cost of living.
An economic conflict between the United States (US) and China began early in 2018, when President Donald Trump set trade barriers on China, claiming unfair commercial practices and intellectual property theft from the Asian giant. China took retaliatory action, imposing tariffs on multiple US goods, such as automobiles and soybeans. Tensions escalated until the two countries signed the US-China Phase One trade deal in January 2020. The agreement required structural reforms and other changes to China’s economic and trade regime and pretended to restore stability and trust between the two nations. However, the Coronavirus pandemic took the focus out of the conflict. Yet, it is worth mentioning that President Joe Biden, who took office after Trump, kept tariffs in place and even added some additional levies.
The return of Donald Trump to the White House as the 47th US President has sparked a fresh wave of tensions between the two countries. During the 2024 election campaign, Trump pledged to impose 60% tariffs on China once he returned to office, which he did on January 20, 2025. With Trump back, the US-China trade war is meant to resume where it was left, with tit-for-tat policies affecting the global economic landscape amid disruptions in global supply chains, resulting in a reduction in spending, particularly investment, and directly feeding into the Consumer Price Index inflation.