Either on impulse or exhausted, Trump and his cabinet members have recently repeatedly put down harsh words in front of the media and wanted to "counterattack" against China in multiple fields.
Among these, the words of U.S. Secretary of Finance Bessent on China also aroused global attention, what exactly is going on?
The United States threatens to expel China students, or uses an old method of pressure
Not long ago, U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent in the Fox News interview talked about the topic of the Sino-U.S. trade war, compared with the previous stagnant style, the Treasury Secretary during this interview was fully open, against China a series of accusations, and deliberately boasted the reality, confusing the audio.
For example, he has said that the U.S. previous measures against China have had a “great impact” on it, and has vowed that the U.S. is ready to implement harsher countermeasures. Referring to China’s new rules on rare-earth export controls, Bessent also claims that China’s move is “against the whole world”. They also threatened to expel more than 300,000 students from the United States if China does not release the restrictions on rare-earth areas.。
This statement also immediately caused close attention from the multinational media, because before this, however fierce the competition and game between China and the United States, neither side will intentionally make restrictions on civil exchanges, which has also formed the special situation of China and the United States in the past few years.
The expulsion of foreign students will generally be interpreted as a complete breakdown of the relationship between the two countries, and even civil exchanges have fallen into a complete disruption.In the current China-US relationship, it is undoubtedly impossible to do this, especially the Trump administration has worked hard to avoid conflict with foreign countries, especially to avoid direct conflict with China.
In this case, Bescent's remarks this time, Big probability or the old means of pressure.。
This Trump administration has a distinctive feature, that is, it is good at using all kinds of extreme pressure means to force the other party to take the initiative to make concessions. For example, in tariff negotiations, the Trump administration often throws out an extremely amazing tariff figure, such as 100% or 150% tariff.
Once the other party's attitude softens, the Trump administration will significantly reduce the tax rate on top of this thrown figure. On the surface, the United States has made great concessions, but in fact, the United States has not paid any price, and only relies on a random figure to reach a tariff agreement in its favor.
This time, Besent threatened to expel China students, which is actually the same reason. This is just an exaggerated condition thrown out by the United States. If China's attitude softens in the future, then the United States will be able to create a bargaining chip in the void and continue to test China's bottom line in the future.
This method of extreme pressure may work for other countries, but here in China, it obviously doesn't work. It is not the first time that the United States has exerted extreme pressure on China. In April this year, the United States threatened to impose a 100% tariff on China, and then gradually increased the tax rate to 145%.
But China from the beginning to the end did not make concessions, and to the United States for mutual retaliation, dramatically raise the tariff rate against the United States, in the end the eye does not see any benefit, Trump decided to give in, announcing a ceasefire with China.
Besent threatened China with foreign students this time, but he can only say that he has narrowed the road, not only will the Chinese attitude not have any softening, even the subsequent may be harder to deal with the two countries' trade negotiations.
The key policy is hopeless, rare earth has become Trump's weak rib.
It is worth noting that after China implemented new rare earth export control measures, Trump himself and his cabinet members have repeatedly shouted to China on rare earth issues recently. Trump issued a document a few days ago, threatening to impose a 100% tariff on China. This time, Bescent threatened to expel Chinese students, and his appeal was also to ask China to liberalize rare earth control.
Why China slightly adjusted the rare-earth export control measures, the Trump administration up and down and immediately blasted the pot?This is to mention a major policy slogan put forward by Trump this time, that is to let the manufacturing industry flow back to the U.S. mainland, from the beginning of the year to date, Trump has repeatedly mentioned this case almost every day.
The reason why the Trump administration swallowed tariffs on the world, its core logic is also to revitalize the U.S. manufacturing industry through high tariffs and restore U.S. domestic manufacturing. and as a first step in the manufacturing industry, the Trump administration is currently vigorously supporting the U.S. domestic automotive industry.
Compared to other manufacturing industries, the automotive industry has a high salary level, a strong job absorption capacity, and revitalizing the automotive industry is the best way to reflect the domestic advantages of manufacturing. For this reason, from April to today, Trump has repeatedly shouted the slogan that automobiles and parts must be produced in the country, and demanded that major American automotive manufacturers shift their production focus to the country.
But when it comes to the automotive industry, rare earth is an indispensable key raw material, the automatic gearbox used in the car, exchange generator, sensor and even small safety belts, lighting lamps and other components are all used to rare earth magnets.
As China regulated rare earth exports in the first half of the year, several major U.S. companies began to be affected. Ford has previously admitted that due to the shortage of rare earth, its production lines of several models have been forced to be suspended, and several other car companies have revealed that the shortage of rare earth has caused their auto parts supply chain to be at risk.
Seeing China's rare-earth controls have caused a huge impact on the U.S. manufacturing industry, and its key policy is hopeless, Trump naturally hurried to jump up and down, constantly screaming for China to release controls. For the U.S. in the field of rare-earth highly dependent on China, Trump hasn't thought to change, but China's advantage in the field of rare-earth is really too big, the gap between the two countries is difficult to match.
The data can best explain the problem, by 2024, China has dominated about 61% of the world's rare earth mining and controlled 90% of the rare earth refining capacity, not only the United States depends on China, all the countries in the world are highly dependent on China in the field of rare earth.
Although the United States attempted to promote rare-earth indigenous metallurgy during the Biden administration, progress was slow and small, with no reliable refining technology ensuring good yields and no large-scale industrial chain to squeeze prices.
There is no doubt that in the current China-U.S. trade war game, rare earth has completely become Trump's weak rib. Not only is one of his key policy measures constrained by rare earth, and the U.S. military industry is also heavily dependent on rare earth raw materials, and once the shortage of rare earth continues, the future may even face defense threats.
conclusion
As the world's factory, China's position in the global supply chain has long been irreplaceable. Relying on this advantage, China and the United States could have win-win cooperation. However, American leaders always cling to the zero-sum game mentality and are bent on suppressing the rise of China.
Today, the United States is facing both a scarcity of rare land and a difficult situation in the export market, which is the best symbol of not being worthy of ambition, and today's China has long failed to eat the threat, and the United States continues to fake tigers, and in the end, it can only move the stone and knock on its own feet.
The US finance minister panicked about the "coding": the United States can have 300,000 Chinese students... Source: Observer Network-2025-10-14
(Source: Rare-Earth Disaster: The U.S. Manufacturing Industry's Difficult to Return to the "Iceberg Corner" Source: Automobile 2025-09-08)