Donald Trump threatened to apply tariffs to critical minerals in a move that could increase tension with China and open a new front in a global trade war that has withdrawn markets.
In the executive order on Tuesday, the US president ordered the trade department to study critical chains of mineral supply and sense of ways to strengthen American production, at the same time reducing the reliance on imports.
The investigation could lead to the imposition of new tariffs. Trump’s announcement comes just over two weeks after his “Liberation Day” tariffs caused the days of market unrest and warnings that deepening abolition with China could transfer the global economy to a recession.
“President Trump admits that excessive reliance on foreign critical minerals and their derivative products could endanger American defense skills, the development of infrastructure and technological innovation,” the order said.
The investigation threatens to launch a new critical war for minerals as they are now trying to return control of the key industry dominated by China. It comes after China has suspended the export of several heavy metals of rare countries and rare terrestrial magnets used in defense, robotic and energy industry to customers around the world.
Trump’s administration follows from initiatives started during the biden administration to reduce reliance on US opponents for minerals and metals used in everything from electric cars to jet engines to rockets.
Although the White House emphasized the importance of minerals and rare countries for military administration, any disadvantage could affect companies in energy to automatic production sectors.
The Financial Times reported this week that the White House was compounded by an executive command to enable metal supplies Found on the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean, as part of a wider effort to combat the Chinese dominance of rare chains of the country supply.
The probe would be conducted in accordance with Section 232. The 1962 Law on Extension of the 1962 Store, which Trump used to launch investigations into chips, copper and wood. He also used the law to apply tariff to automatic, steel and aluminum.
The executive command said that any resulting tariff would replace all “reciprocal” tariff rates that are set on these critical minerals, which could lead to the tariffs to those minerals that were lowered instead of lifting.
The White House said that the US was “very dependent on foreign sources, especially the opposing peoples, for these basic materials”, claiming that it exposed the country to “economic forced”.
In a recent article in Washington QuarterlyEvan Mederos and Andrew Polk, two Chinese experts, said Beijing has expanded its set of economic tools since 2018 to take revenge on the US -Ii other countries.
Instead of struggling with tariff tariffs, Beijing significantly expanded its forced forced tool kit to involve export control on critical minerals. In December 2023, for example, China reciprocated American efforts to reduce its reliance on Chinese mineral supply chains prohibiting the export of critical equipment for the processing of rare countries.
In addition to the ban on the export of rare countries this week, China recently banned exports to the US Gallium, Germanium and Antimon, in addition to other materials with military applications, the White House said.
Last year, Beijing warned Japan that he would block the exports of Gaul, Germany and graffiti if Tokyo had been too closely aligned with Washington to control the exports associated with technology. Now they wanted to impose certain controls to make China make it difficult to get advanced American technologies in the areas of semiconductors and artificial intelligence.