Trump Says Magnet Restrictions Ending; Lutnick Says US Will End Countermeasures
The U.S. and China reached an agreement for Beijing to rein in export curbs on critical minerals, and for the U.S. to "provide to China what was agreed to," President Donald Trump said June 11, offering few details about the substance of the deal.
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After meetings this week between senior officials in London, Trump said on social media: "OUR DEAL WITH CHINA IS DONE, SUBJECT TO FINAL APPROVAL WITH PRESIDENT XI AND ME. FULL MAGNETS, AND ANY NECESSARY RARE EARTHS, WILL BE SUPPLIED, UP FRONT, BY CHINA. LIKEWISE, WE WILL PROVIDE TO CHINA WHAT WAS AGREED TO." Trump said the U.S. will continue to allow Chinese students to "use" American universities, and added that "WE ARE GETTING A TOTAL OF 55% TARIFFS, CHINA IS GETTING 10%. RELATIONSHIP IS EXCELLENT!"
He said in a separate post that he and President Xi Jinping "are going to work closely together to open up China to American Trade."
Trump didn't specify whether the U.S. agreed to lift export controls on shipments of semiconductors, chip-related technology, aviation equipment or other items that the Bureau of Industry and Security has restricted in recent days (see 2505290038, 2505300006 and 2506060002). A senior administration official earlier this week said the U.S. was willing to lift export controls over certain semiconductors in exchange for China approving exports of rare earths and other critical minerals (see 2506090033).
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, on CNBC, said, "The Chinese side always wants to remove our export controls. And Scott Bessent gave one of my favorite lines of the whole negotiation. Fine, I'd like to take home a couple of your best hypersonic missiles, please."
Lutnick did not say what the U.S. agreed to with regard to export controls, but did say, "If you're an American company and you need [rare earth] magnets, they're going to approve [the export license] right away. We tried for everybody else," he said, but only got the Chinese to agree to relax restrictions for U.S. firms. "We will take off our countermeasures as they approve these magnets."
The Wall Street Journal said the U.S. countermeasures that will be lifted are restrictions on ethane and jet engines.
In London, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said that the London talks were about China removing their countermeasures, "whether it was their rare earth minerals or other things that they agreed to do" at an earlier meeting in Geneva.
Lutnick told CNBC that the U.S. is not going to increase tariffs on China as talks continue. He said over the next few months, U.S. negotiators will be talking to Chinese counterparts to ask them to buy more U.S. agricultural products and equipment to shrink the trade deficit.
The two sides had a "candid and in-depth dialogue," according to a report by Chinese state-run media outlet Xinhua that China's Ministry of Commerce published on its website. The report didn't specifically outline what the deal entails.
The U.S. and China "reached a principled consensus on the framework of measures to implement the important consensus" reached by the countries' two presidents during a phone call earlier this month, it said, according to an unofficial translation.
"China and the United States will benefit from cooperation in the economic and trade field, but will suffer from confrontation. There is no winner in a trade war. China does not want to fight, but it is not afraid of fighting. The two sides should resolve economic and trade differences through equal dialogue and mutually beneficial cooperation."