Rare earth détente or tactical pause? (One Decision)

"China Has Fired That Warning Gun and It’s off to the Races"

This week, former MI6 Head Sir Richard Dearlove and Christina Ruffini sit down with Liza Tobin, ex-China Director at the U.S. National Security Council, to discuss what Donald Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping could mean for America’s reliance on Chinese rare earth minerals, whether the West can secure its own supply, and what’s at stake for global trade.

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🎙️Episode Highlights

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping just wrapped their meeting in South Korea today. The meeting reportedly concluded with a 12-month resumption of China’s rare-earth export curbs, among other outcomes.

Our guest, Liza Tobin, anticipated this deal, noting that a pause would be...

"The best news that the U.S. and markets could hope for."

This, however, aligns with the Chinese negotiation tactic — "try to leave [...] some wiggle room, and retain maximum leverage and maximum optionality." 

Rare-earth exports are "an important bargaining chip" for China, which they’ve continued to "drag out" and "recycle" since springtime, when they have "pulled this gun out of the holster."

But how did China get a "chokehold" over rare-earth minerals?

The problem "didn't come out of nowhere," Tobin argues. Rare-earth minerals are abundant, but their mining and processing are "dirty," "dangerous," and "not profitable." Back in 1992, Deng Xiaoping was quick to capitalize on this market gap by investing heavily and subsidizing this branch of the industry.

"The U.S. can't completely get out of this choke point on its own."

Tobin says China’s rare-earth export controls, announced on October 9th, were a "massive escalation," essentially asserting jurisdiction over the entire world’s technology sector, and should serve as a warning shot that gets the West to "wake up."

While China is dependent on the U.S. for advanced AI chips, a full export curb is "a gun that the U.S. has kept in its pocket" so far, as it would require coordination with allies like Taiwan and Japan.

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"My fear is that the West needs to act quickly. There are economic factors dragging on China that can't be reversed. So we need to sort of take the next few years and make sure they don't win the technology competition before their economy slows them down."

-Liza Tobin

Can the U.S. address its rare-earth dependency before China closes the AI-chip gap? 

Join us for a thorough yet digestible analysis of Beijing's tight grip on global rare-earth processing with Liza Tobin, former China Director at the U.S. National Security Council. 

The conversation is out now, only on One Decision. 

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