China took aim on Monday at a U.S. government program to reduce American reliance on Chinese imports for rare-earth magnets, a move that risks reigniting trade tensions with President Trump.
New restrictions will prohibit Chinese companies from shipping certain rare-earth metals to two companies that are leading the Trump administration’s efforts to revive the American rare-earth industry.
The metals banned by China’s Ministry of Commerce are critical for a wide range of products, from cars to military drones, and China controls nearly the entire global supply of them.
After meeting in South Korea with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, last October, Mr. Trump said China had agreed to resume supplying rare-earth metals to the United States as needed. Chinese officials, however, never publicly described the agreement in such terms.
A follow-up summit between the two leaders in Beijing last month produced no further progress on rare-earth supplies.
At last week’s Group of 7 summit in France, leaders of the major industrialized nations pledged to reduce their dependence on any supplier, calling for no more than 60 percent of rare-earth imports to come from one country by 2030. The world relies on China for about 90 percent of its supply of so-called light rare earths, which are used in oil refining, glass polishing and magnet production.
