r/worldnews • u/Significant-Colour • 1d ago

China strikes back at Trump with 34 percent tariff — bans rare earth exports to the U.S.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/china-strikes-back-on-trump-tariffs-bans-rare-earth-exports-to-the-u-s
45.3k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

74

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

26

u/Odd_Perfect 1d ago

He’s gonna team up with Russia to invade them

3

u/Orestis_Zrs 1d ago

that would be a day to remember... seems so unlikely!

5

u/Gurasola 1d ago

Considering how many countries are already planning to send Ukraine a good chunk of defense funds, this may not work out for them as planned.

2

u/AsherGray 1d ago

China is also included on that list

2

u/FemHawkeSlay 1d ago

Imagine if we had just helped them properly from the get go, they probably would have been sold a generous deal willingly for helping protect their sovereignty.

2

u/imminatural 19h ago

The cards are the heavy metal refining capabilities. Most of the Chinese ore is imported, processed, and exported again. They were willing to pay the investment, burn the coal, and export all the material at a loss just to control the capability to refine - we can turn to allies (who don't operate in warzones like Ukraine) for all the critical minerals, but we can't build refineries overnight.

Ukraine holds no cards, both their hands are busy holding the line.

2

u/[deleted] 18h ago edited 18h ago

[deleted]

1

u/imminatural 17h ago

There's like a list of 30 minerals, but for example, New Zealand, Zambia, Australia, and Senegal. Any neutral country that's on the water is secure because the US has total naval control outside of the south china sea. And when I say secure, I mean they aren't a war-zone, and the US has had nothing but normal global trade relations with them. There are roughly 200 countries, and plenty of them could become investment vehicles for refining operations if we want the capability in 10 years.

Maybe we should have secured our resource chains before stabbing every neutral within a knife's distance. Look at what we did to Japan, they are our biggest cheerleader. I think only Mexico and Canada were spared from the tariffs, so I guess they are the only trustworthy allies left. Aka - we can trust them to not betray us to China, but they shouldn't trust us.

0

u/Occasion-Mental 1d ago

Not Ukraine...Russia.

The area where those minerals lay are in the so far invaded areas under Putins control.