Kristof: Trump lost to China

After the U S -China summit planned for Thursday President Donald Trump may crow about his deal-making skill Aides may suggest that he deserves a Nobel Prize for negotiation but I invite you to roll your eyes The preponderance vital bilateral relationship in the world in the present day is between the United States and China and Trump has bungled it He started a pact war that Washington has been losing and if a truce is formalized this week it will likely be one with China holding power over America and leaving our influence diminished When Trump rashly reported his Liberation Day tariffs in April he badly miscalculated He seemed to think that China was vulnerable because it exported far more to the United States than it purchased He apparently didn t appreciate that much of what China purchased like soybeans it could get elsewhere while Beijing is now the OPEC of rare earth minerals leaving us without alternative sources China controls about of rare earths and is the sole supplier of six heavy rare earth minerals it also dominates rare earth magnets Related Articles Trump s attack on Ontario s Reagan ad helped amplify its reach Trump threatens Canada with extra import tax for not pulling down anti-tariffs ad sooner Silicon Valley tech giant to cut more than jobs after sales slow Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada will double its non-US exports as Canadians can t rely on US USDA is reopening various offices to help farmers access billion in aid despite the ongoing shutdown Rare earths and rare earth magnets are essential ingredients of modern industry They are necessary for the manufacturing of drones automobiles airplanes wind turbines countless electronics and much military equipment without them chosen American factories would close and military suppliers would be severely affected A single submarine can require tons of rare earths It was quite predictable that China would respond to an international dispute by weaponizing its control over rare earths for that is what it did with Japan in Sure enough two days after Trump revealed his Liberation Day tariffs China reported export controls for particular rare earths It then greatly expanded the export controls this month Over a barrel It soon became obvious that President Xi Jinping of China had us over a barrel for the U S business sector depends on Chinese rare earths far more than China depends on American soybeans Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says that negotiators have now reached a substantial framework for a arrangement deal between Trump and Xi If the framework holds it appears that the United States will cut and cancel tariffs and China will suspend its latest restrictions on rare earth mineral exports and resume soybean purchases On the surface that might look like a return to the status quo before the transaction war but it s more like our surrendering and ending up in a weaker position after a conflict we started That s because the dispute led China to weaponize its control of rare earths and hold this over us indefinitely as a cudgel Indeed a one-year suspension of export controls on rare earths would be a brilliant move by Xi allowing Beijing to retain its leverage over the United States without causing such disruption that America and other countries would make all-out efforts to break China s near-monopoly on the minerals At a conference over the weekend I solicited a large room full of international relations experts for a show of hands Who thought the United States was winning the commerce war who considered China was winning and who thought it was too soon to tell Overwhelmingly people disclosed China was winning and now holds the advantage Now that Trump has induced China to weaponize rare earths we don t have any rapid way of finding alternative sources Republican and Democratic presidents over the years should have worked much harder to develop rare earth mines and refineries Terry Lynch the CEO of Power Metallic Mines a major mining company based in Canada explained that the West requirements a Manhattan Project-scale effort to develop rare earth capabilities but that even such an all-out initiative would maybe take five to seven years to get results In that interim time we re going to have to make a deal with China he mentioned In effect Trump started a contract war and soon discovered that he was carrying a tariff to a knife fight The exchange bully unexpectedly detected himself bullied so he began to court China and make concessions Weakness exposed Trump dialed back tariffs before threatening new ones He eased rules on exporting chips to China He allowed TikTok to continue to operate in the United States despite serious national prevention concerns He blocked a visit to the United States by Taiwan s president and reportedly delayed an arms sale to Taiwan As the Center for American Progress put it the Trump administration s approach to China is in a strategic free fall That s what I worry about in the coming years Xi sees our weakness He has established that he has the upper hand in the bilateral relationship and that Trump is the weak one who will buckle under pressure including on protection matters And because Trump has betrayed and antagonized allies they are less likely to work with us in resisting Beijing Xi may suspend his rare earths restrictions for a year but I doubt he ll let us build stockpiles I suspect it will be more tough for American companies to acquire rare earths to make fighter aircraft and submarines and in fairness Xi in specific respects is completely doing to the United States what we have done to China In any incident a one-year suspension of rare earth licensing may absolutely be a way of reminding U S leaders and others around the world for the restrictions were global of their vulnerability The aim presumably would be to induce more compliant behavior on issues Beijing cares about from Taiwan to human rights complaints about Xinjiang and Tibet Sun Tzu the great military strategist wrote in The Art of War years ago To win victories in battles is not the acme of skill To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill And that may be what Xi has in mind allowing China by its newfound business leverage to project more military power in the western Pacific without firing a single missile Xi may explicitly or implicitly use the threat of limiting rare earth exports to encourage Trump to dial down sponsorship for Taiwan or reduce patrols in the South China Sea If Trump goes along with that it would be an enormous setback for America in Asia and a big gain for Chinese influence Our allies would shudder at the thought of diminished American power in the Pacific and there would be a growing menace of Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait So don t rush to applaud whatever triumphant announcements you may hear from Trump and his aides about a landmark deal with China We Americans may have lost not just a exchange war but a chunk of our global credibility and influence for years to come in solutions that would be seen globally as a harbinger of American decline Nicholas Kristof is a New York Times columnist