Zanny Minton-Beddoes

Base metals that are required and minerals that are required, particularly for computer chips and for the magnets that go into all manner of vehicles and so forth.

And they're also very, very important for the defence industry.

China essentially controls the production of those rare earths.

And it's just announced that it's going to require, you know, essentially a complicated licensing arrangement for anybody to have any access to rare earths.

And it's really flexing its muscles and saying to the United States, we can play at this game of using our economic power.

as a weapon too.

And I think what you're seeing, and the reason that there's a lot of uncertainty about the meeting now, both between the Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart and the President, is that there's a big game of sort of threats and counter threats and chicken going on.

And the

brutal truth is that, yes, the United States has a lot of leverage over China, particularly in financial area.

But China also has a lot of leverage over the United States.

And it's really the one country that I think the U.S.

can't essentially push around through using economic weapons.

Do you think that Trump did not count on retaliation?

I think President Trump has a very strong sense of America's ability to use its military and economic power to push countries around.

And also his own personal power.

Yes, I think he's extremely good at that.

He's extremely good at recognizing weakness in others and using the clout that he has as America's president to further what in his view is America's advantage.

I would not be so sure that often it is in America's advantage, but he sees it as that.

But I think China is a case where he's sort of met his match and President Xi is being as tough in return and is playing hardball.

And when President Xi is playing hardball, it becomes clear that President Trump is keen to negotiate.