U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue says Beijing has turned its dominance over critical minerals into a weapon, and that anyone trying to build supply chains outside China’s control now risks arrest, criminal prosecution and seizure of assets.
“This is a single-source dominant position that China is weaponizing against the world right now,” Perdue told “Fox News Sunday.” “We have committed to them that this is unacceptable.”
Perdue said the United States will not bow to Beijing to keep doing business, and laid the blame for America’s dependence on China at the feet of decades of policy drift.
“Twenty years ago, the United States had single-source dominant positions in rare earth magnets, commercial shipbuilding [and] pharmaceuticals,” Perdue said. “And all these have been absconded by China in a way that we allowed over the last 20 years.”
He said the Trump administration is now working to reverse that dependence and rebuild America’s capacity to operate independent of Beijing. “President Trump has stood up now and said, ‘Enough. We’re going to defend America now. We’re going to be independent,'” Perdue said.
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has separately argued that China is effectively holding critical minerals hostage and that his state can play a role in breaking that dependence. Researchers at West Virginia University have also been working on a domestic alternative, developing a process to extract rare earth minerals from polluted mine water.
Trade officials press for faster, bigger deliveries
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer raised separate concerns about the pace and scale of China’s rare-earth deliveries to the U.S., telling Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich that Washington wants the materials in “greater volumes” and in a “more timely way.”
“That’s something that we continue [to] work on,” Greer said. “President Trump raised it with President Xi quite directly, and that’s just one of many items that we’re still looking at.”
Greer said the administration is treating the next two months as a “compliance period” to determine whether Beijing follows through on its commitments.
Separately, the U.S.-China Board of Trade recommended Sunday that each country identify $30 billion in nonsensitive goods eligible for more favorable tariff treatment, according to Greer’s office. USTR said the administration will keep pressing China to meet its agricultural and energy commitments as well.
