China pauses rare earth limits: What does it mean?

China has agreed to stand down on enforcing some of its recent limits on exports of critical minerals, but apparently not all of them.

- KEITH BRADSHER

After a meeting Thursday between President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, China's top leader, the Ministry of Commerce in China said it would suspend for a year the export controls it issued Oct 9.

However, China made no public commitment to retreat from earlier limits, which it imposed in the spring and last winter, and which continue to snarl global supply chains.

The October orders were, in the words of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, "a bazooka at the supply chains and the industrial base of the entire free world." They included a halt to any further export of technology or equipment that might help other countries develop their own rare earth mines, refineries and magnet factories, except with permission from China's commerce ministry.

Trump said Thursday after his meeting with Mr Xi, held in Busan, South Korea, that he expected the yearlong suspension would be extended before it expired.

But China's Commerce Ministry said it planned to "study and refine" its Oct 9 regulations, which have drawn considerable criticism from Europe as well as the United States for being very broad and also ambiguous.

Perhaps even more important, the ministry did not offer public assurance that it would back away from the stringent export control rules that it imposed on critical minerals in April and December.