Tensions between the U.S. and China escalated sharply this week after Donald Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese goods and threatened to cancel an upcoming meeting with President Xi Jinping. Beijing responded not with matching tariffs, but with sweeping new controls on rare earth exports—materials critical to the U.S. chip and defense industries. Advertisement

The sudden back-and-forth between the world’s two largest economies has cast fresh uncertainty over a planned Trump–Xi summit in South Korea, where both sides were expected to finalize a broad trade agreement.

Instead, the conflict appears to be widening—from finished goods to the materials that make them.

On October 9, China’s Ministry of Commerce introduced new rules requiring government approval for the export of any produ

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