Oct. 10 (UPI) — President Donald Trump is imposing another 100% in tariffs on Chinese goods exported to the United States and will restrict software exports to China.
The new tariffs are in addition to an existing 30% tariff on Chinese goods and would take effect on Nov. 1, and possibly sooner, the president said in a social media post on Friday, according to CBS News.
The United States in November also will place restrictions on “critical software” destined for China.
Trump said he also might cancel a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping due to new Chinese restrictions on rare earth minerals exports.
Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet in South Korea during an international economic conference that starts on Nov. 2, but the U.S. president on Friday said he no longer has a reason to do so.
“Some very strange things are happening in China!” the president said Friday in a post on Truth Social.
“They are becoming very hostile and sending letters to countries throughout the world that they want to impose export controls on each and every element of production having to do with rare earths,” Trump said.
The export restrictions would “clog’ the markets and make life difficult for virtually every country in the world — especially for China,” he added.
The president said representatives of other nations have contacted his administration and are “extremely angry over this trade hostility, which came out of nowhere.”
“There is no way China should be allowed to hold the world ‘captive,'” Trump said.
“But that seems to have been their plan for quite some time, starting with the ‘magnets’ and other elements that they have quietly amassed into somewhat of a monopoly position.”
Pending Chinese rare earth minerals restrictions
China sent letters that are several pages long to other nations and detail every rare earth element that Chinese leaders want to withhold from other countries, Trump said.
China controls most of the world’s rare earth minerals market and announced the new restrictions on Thursday, according to CNBC.
The restrictions announced on Thursday would take effect on Dec. 1 and affect the manufacturing of semiconductors and other technologies that rely on rare earth minerals, such as batteries for electric vehicles.
The Chinese government intends to require companies located outside of China to obtain a license to export their goods that contain rare earth minerals, The New York Times reported.
It also seeks to regulate the refining of rare earth minerals and certain types of technologies used to manufacture batteries.
The Chinese trade restrictions were announced amid efforts to ease trade tensions between the United States and China, which Trump and Jinping were expected to discuss during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Seoul, South Korea, in January, Politico reported.
Mutually assured economic disruption
Beijing’s announcement on Thursday could trigger “mutually assured disruption” of the Chinese, U.S. and other global economies, said Craig Singleton, a China fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
He called China’s move a “miscalculation” and said Trump’s social media post shows China has crossed a line that is likely to cause a trade war.
“Both sides are reaching for their economic weapons at the same time,” Singleton told Politico, “and neither seems willing to back down.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average reflected the news of the likely trade war on Friday and was down more than 520 points at $45,837.60 as of 2:25 p.m. EDT.
While the Dow is down, China’s pending rare earth minerals trade restrictions have spurred a run on related stocks, CNBC reported.
Rare earth mining firm MP Materials’ share price rose by 15% and USA Rare Earth’s shares by 19 percent during morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
USA Rare Earth is a vertically integrated rare earth miner and producer of magnets used in a variety of technologies.
NioCorp Developments’ share price also rose by 14% and Energy Fuels’ by more than 10% during trading late Friday morning.