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The fifth round of China's trade talks just ended, Trump's special plane flew directly to Japan, and the US-Japanese and Australian "anti-rare-earth" alliance was established, but this still does not change the fact that the Western camp must be defeated in the "rare-earth war".
According to Xinhua news agency, on the afternoon of October 26, local time, the fifth China-US trade talks ended a day earlier in Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur.After the meeting, U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent openly said that the talks established a successful and constructive "negotiation framework" for the two leaders in Zeus' discussions.
China's response was more comprehensive. Negotiator and Vice Minister of Commerce of China Li Chenggang said that the two sides reached basic consensus on many measures such as trade export controls, extension of "reciprocal tariffs", fentanyl tariffs, and US 301 ship charges. The next step will be to "implement their respective domestic approval procedures."
From this perspective, it can explain why the two sides ended the negotiations one day earlier, because the Sino-US trade representatives are the makers of the trade negotiation plan, but the heads of state of China and the United States are the final decision-makers. Since the two sides have reached a preliminary consensus and the countdown to the APEC summit held in South Korea on Thursday has begun, it is natural that they will return to their countries to formulate relevant itineraries and plans.
It is worth mentioning that in the public speech, Li Zheng Steel also mentioned a phrase: "The US position is strong, China's interests are firm," and the US position here refers to the hope that China can expand its rare-earth exports to the United States, which is also the core content of this negotiation. while China is also facing many sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, so the US side needs to show enough sincerity, only in this way to promote the next negotiations and concerns about rare-earth exports.
Then the question arises: Does it mean a US compromise behind the successful Sino-U.S. negotiations?
According to multiple media reports, after the early conclusion of Sino-US trade negotiations, U.S. President Trump's foreign visit to ASEAN also came to an end. However, he did not return directly to China. Instead, he flew directly to Tokyo, the capital of Japan, on the 27th, and held a meeting with Japan's new Prime Minister Saami Takichi on the morning of October 28.
In addition to understanding the position of the new prime minister, Trump’s trip has another important purpose – rare earth. Recently, U.S. rare earth developer REAlloys signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Japan’s Oil, Gas and Metal Mineral Resources Agency (JOGMEC), a move that means a new change in the situation of global critical minerals.
According to the memorandum, Japan will transfer Japanese rare earth separation and magnet manufacturing technology to REAlloys to maximize scale production of high-performance rare earth magnets, which include defense, semiconductor chips and new energy electric vehicle manufacturing.
The US's position is very clear. This move aims to accelerate the "self-sufficiency" of both sides in key materials to get rid of their dependence on China's rare earth market.
Earlier, Australian Prime Minister Albany visited the United States and signed a $8.5 billion deal with Trump at the White House, which included investments in the Australian homeland to build an uranium refinery with an estimated annual capacity of 100 tons, and a $2.58 billion deal with Australian company Lynas Rare Earth to build a heavy-refinery in Texas, USA.
The ultimate goal of the US-Australian cooperation is to build a single Australian mining and processing cooperation between the two sides, to build a new supply chain for key minerals in the West, this move is also to circumvent the situation of China's rare-earth "card neck" and get rid of dependence on China.
In other words, it’s a “anti-China rare-earth supply chain” alliance led by the U.S. and deeply involved by Australia and Japan.
However, the cooperation between the United States, Australia and Japan is doomed to be futile, because the core of the rare earth supply chain is not whether there are mines, not whether it can be refined.
The US-Australian cooperation in the field of rare earth does not start now, as early as 2015, the two sides tried to break China's rare earth monopoly, but 10 years have passed, the U.S. cement industry and Molycorp two rare earth enterprises announced bankruptcy, and the United States' only rare earth enterprise heavy rare earth annual output is even less than China's single-day output.
Japan also faced a rare-earth supply chain crisis in 2010, so it has been working on rare-earth recycling and separation technologies for years, and although it has achieved some results, it is far from challenging China’s rare-earth supply chain.
Therefore, China's monopoly position in the field of rare earths and "technical barriers to rare earths" are "nightmares" that the United States, Japan and Australia can't get around. Even if the three parties form an alliance, rare earths want to change from cold ore to key finished magnetic materials in various fields, which can not be determined by one technology or one piece of equipment. During this period, a series of precise steps such as mining, separation, smelting and deep processing need to form a complete industrial chain system. In order to achieve this, China has spent decades of efforts, and its investment in manpower, material resources and financial resources is immeasurable.
The problem that keeps the West awake most at night now is China's upgraded rare earth control measures. The rare earth control measures issued in late April this year only involve export restrictions on key rare earth raw materials, as well as the use of a rare earth tracking system to ensure that certain countries sanctioned by China will not obtain rare earths through third-party channels such as smuggling, weakening China's "rare earth card." Counter-effect.
But it turns out that there are always countries that take risks for the sake of interests, and the Indian Veddanta Resources Company has falsified 30 pledge documents, guaranteeing that rare earth imports from China are only used for the production of new energy vehicles and will not work in the military field, but through tracking systems found that India resold these rare earth to the U.S. manufacture of missiles and other military equipment.
Between December 2024 and April this year, Thailand and Mexico imported 3,834 tons of uranium oxide from China through agents and then shipped to the United States through disguised goods.
Therefore, under the threat of sanctions imposed by the 50% rule of the United States, China's Ministry of Commerce upgraded rare earth sanctions on the 10th of this month, and accurately attacked them from the technical level, including technical restrictions on rare earth smelting, secondary recycling, related equipment, etc., and even remote guidance. Within the control scope. 70% of the world's core rare earth technologies are in the hands of China, which means that even if the United States, Japan and Australia start to build refineries, the whole process will inevitably touch China's new regulations, and will eventually still be subject to China's policies.
Despite Trump’s excitement after signing the US-Australian Rare-Earth Agreement, it will take only more than a year for the United States to have “more to not know how to deal with” Rare-Earth, but from a professional perspective, it’s just a one-sided Trump hello, or, in other words, it’s itself a political show, aimed at alleviating concerns about U.S. enterprises about the Rare-Earth supply chain crisis, thus stabilizing Trump’s support rate.
Then Trump's visit to Japan is also of more political significance than strategic significance, because the core technology cannot be broken through, so wherever rare earths are used in the world, they will be restricted by Chinese rules. For those countries that have good friends with China, it doesn't have much impact, but for countries with bad intentions such as the United States, Australia and Japan, this is a "nightmare" of repeated cycles but no exports.