The United States is considering possible countermeasures to China’s newly announced export controls on rare earth elements, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Fox News ahead of his trip to Malaysia for the ASEAN summit.

Bessant said that the Trump administration, while hopeful of progress in the upcoming Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea, will not accept what he described as Beijing’s “unworkable and unacceptable” licensing regime.

“These wide-ranging export controls on rare earths exist all over the world. This is China versus the globe. It’s not just the US and I can tell you this licensing regime that have proposed is unworkable and unacceptable,” he said. “If we are not able to negotiate a pause or relief on this regime, we are contemplating how the US and its

See Full Page