Xi Comes to Washington Armed With a Rare-Earth Card

Trump-Xi Summit Underscores China's Rare-Earth Trade Leverage

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Analysis: Xi Comes to Washington Armed With a Rare-Earth Card

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Analysis

Xi Comes to Washington Armed With a Rare-Earth Card

Trump still doesn’t have an answer to China’s leverage.

September 22, 2026, 4:53 PM

By **Christina Lu**, a staff writer at *Foreign Policy*.

!An elevated, high-angle view of a mining site filled with piles of reddish-brown soil and heavy machinery. In the foreground, a green front-end loader operates on a dirt path. Near the center, two green dump trucks with raised flatbeds unload earth onto a large mound, while another green dump truck and a red truck drive along a dirt road above them. In the upper right background, a long freight train runs parallel to the road.

*An elevated, high-angle view of a mining site filled with piles of reddish-brown soil and heavy machinery. In the foreground, a green front-end loader operates on a dirt path. Near the center, two green dump trucks with raised flatbeds unload earth onto a large mound, while another green dump truck and a red truck drive along a dirt road above them. In the upper right background, a long freight train runs parallel to the road.*

Workers load trains with imported bauxite bound for alumina refineries in Yantai, China, on Sept. 3. Bauxite smelters produce rare-earth elements as a byproduct. Feature China/Future Publishing via Getty Images

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Trump-Xi Summit

FP’s analysis and reporting

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.

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*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. !This articl