Amy Hawkins

Scott Besson recently said that China should step up and make some more diplomatic efforts.

And it does put the U.S.

in a slightly odd position of they're basically asking for China's help for a war that Trump started and has nothing to do with China.

And, you know, definitely isn't going to send in military support to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz or anything like that.

But for the most part, I think China wants Iran to agree to a ceasefire, sure, and does have some leverage over Iran, given that it buys 80% or more of Iran's oil.

But it's not looking to kind of destabilize its own delicate relationship with the Middle East, with Gulf countries, with Iran, for the sake of giving Trump a political win.

The big leverage that China has at the moment is rare earths.

So in the trade war last year, China banned the export of rare earths, which are these kind of critical minerals, which are actually found kind of all over the world.

But China dominates about 90% of the supply chain of the mining and processing of these elements.

And they are absolutely vital to everything from your smartphone to your car, but also to US military equipment.

And China, when it kind of pulled that lever of banning the export of rare earths, America really felt the pain.

I mean, car factories in America were forced to close.

The US military suddenly realized that it couldn't produce the technology it needed for certain radars and certain advanced military equipment.

That was kind of something which brought the US to the negotiating table last year.

That's probably one of the major points of leverage that China has in these negotiations that the US, you know, it can't really live without China's rare earths for now.

China will want to secure tariffs that are as low as possible, but also as predictable as possible in the long term, and some kind of agreement to fix tariffs at a certain rate.

Even though the trade war has slightly forced China to export more to other countries, the US remains the biggest buyer of Chinese goods.

And so, yeah, China will just be looking to...

restore a sense of normality and predictability to its trade relationship.

So Trump's leverage is the fact that he can impose the tariffs, although that has been slightly challenged by various Supreme Court rulings in the US.