"I'm not going to get ahead of the two leaders who will be meeting in Korea on Thursday, but I can tell you we had a very good two days," Bessent said. "So I would expect that the threat of the 100% [tariff] has gone away, as has the threat of the immediate imposition of the Chinese initiating a worldwide export control regime."
As the presidents of China and the US meet in South Korea, Zongyuan Zoe Liu at the Council on Foreign Relations says China may offer concessions on its rare earth minerals. As the presidents of China and the US meet in South Korea, Zongyuan Zoe Liu at the Council on Foreign Relations says China may offer concessions on its rare earth minerals.
Last month, Pakistan signed a defence agreement with Saudi Arabia. Under this bold pact, an attack on one will be regarded as an attack on both, a dramatic escalation of security guarantees in a region already crowded with rivalries. At the same time, Islamabad has quietly dispatched rare earth mineral samples to the United States and is exploring deeper export agreements. Washington, for its part, appears newly interested in treating Pakistan as more than a peripheral irritant.
When you are facing a nonmarket economy like China, then you have to exercise industrial policy, Bessent said. The Treasury Secretary explained that China has put rare earth mineral companies out of business by massively dropping their own prices. We're going to set price floors and the forward buying to make sure that this doesn't happen again, and we're going to do it across a range of industries, he said.
High atop the Luossavaara Mountain in northern Sweden, Sami reindeer herder Lars-Marcus Kuhmunen mapped out a bleak future for himself and other Indigenous people whose reindeer have roamed this land for thousands of years. An expanding iron-ore mine and a deposit of rare-earth minerals are fragmenting the land and altering ancient reindeer migration routes. But with the Arctic warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, herders say they need more geographic flexibility, not less, to ensure the animals' survival.
