The world exhaled when the United States and China unveiled a 90-day tariff truce last month, pausing the escalating trade war between the globe's largest and second-largest economies, which had rattled businesses and investors.

The deal, after tense negotiations in Geneva, slashed US tariffs on Chinese imports from 145% to 30% and China's retaliatory levies on US goods from 125% to 10%.

Just three weeks later, however, US President Donald Trump reignited tensions, saying that China had "totally violated" the truce deal, without providing further details. Trump later said his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, was "extremely hard to make a deal with."

China swiftly countered, asserting that Washington had imposed "discriminatory and restrictive measures" since the Geneva talks, pointing to US curbs on chip design software and warnings about artificial intelligence (AI) chips produced by Chinese tech giant Huawei.

US policymakers have voiced frustration at China's stalling on export license approvals for rare earths and other elements needed in the high-tech, defense, and clean energy sectors.

China, which dominates global rare-earth production with over two-thirds of supply and 90% of processing capacity, has imposed export restrictions on several key minerals. The US, lacking domestic rare-earth processing capacity, remains highly vulnerable to........

© Deutsche Welle