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Rare Earths at the Trump-Xi Summit: Relief Without a Resolution

The Trump-Xi meeting may temporarily ease anxiety over rare earth supplies, but it is unlikely to lower the political and regulatory threshold for access.

Rare earths entered the Trump-Xi summit before the two leaders even sat down. On September 21, two days before President Xi Jinping’s arrival in the United States, China’s Foreign Ministry faced a series of questions on whether Beijing had “fully resumed rare earth deliveries,” whether a “November 10 deadline or expanded restrictions on rare earth exports” could be extended, and whether rare earths controls involving Japan would feature in the Washington talks. The responses were deliberately cautious: Beijing reiterated its commitment to “keeping the global industrial and supply chains of critical minerals safe and stable,” but emphasized that dual-use exports would remain subject to legal and security considerations. 

The Foreign Ministry’s responses captured the central paradox of the summit: it may temporarily ease anxiety over rare earth supplies, but it is unlikely to lower the political and regulatory threshold for access.

In April 2025, China’s Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs placed several medium and heavy rare earth elements – including samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium – under export controls. Exporters of these items are required to apply for licenses, with the stated legal basis including China’s Export Control Law and regulations on dual-use items. This does not amount to a blanket ban on exports, but it does shift rare earth access from a purely commercial transaction to a regulated process shaped by licensing, end-use review, and national security considerations. Once such controls are embedded in a legal and bureaucratic system, they are not easily removed. A summit can improve predictability, but it will not result in the dismantling of China’s carefully built legal framework for export controls.

The same logic applies on the U.S. side. Even if the summit reduces short-term pressure, Washington is unlikely to abandon its effort to diversify away from China-centered critical mineral supply chains. In January 2026, the White House framed U.S. dependence on imports of processed critical minerals and their derivative products as a national security concern, noting that even where the United States has domestic mining capacity, it often lacks sufficient downstream processing capacity. The policy response has therefore gone beyond asking China for more predictable deliveries. The United States is investing in domestic processing, recycling and alternative supply chains, while also working with allies and partners to reduce exposure to single-source dependence. In this sense, any relief produced by the summit may buy some time, but it will not weaken Washington’s broader push for supply-chain diversification.

Rare earths occupy this strategic space because they are not simply another category of traded minerals. Their importance lies less in the raw materials themselves than in the........

© The Diplomat