China REALLY wants Trump to invade Venezuela!
But half joking aside, while the Americans are infamous for loving to create problems for the other side before big negotiations and offer to solve those problems to get real concessions for basically nothing, I think they are about to get a real masterclass in how many such cards the Chinese bureaucratic machine can churn out for Beijing at will.
So REE exports went from officially banned to merely practically banned. Chinese companies are no longer banned from selling REE to the Americans, they just all universally, independently choose not to, for purely business and economic reasons of course. Easiest would be that a certain Chinese SOE just bought out all of China’s annual output of those REE the Americans are so desperate for, for the next decade. Here, we have a fully signed contract dated 1 day before the export ban was lifted. Hands are tied, computer says no. You understand.