Maybe Beijing is right, and Trump will keep the normal irritants in bilateral relations at bay throughout 2026 in a bid to keep Chinese rare-earth exports and soybean purchases flowing. But more bumps in the road are likely. And rare earths are likely to be among the first.<\/p>\n
2. There\u2019s a lot of confusion around rare earths<\/p>\n
The Trump administration expects China to issue the United States a \u201cgeneral license\u201d to import rare earths through at least October 2026. After the Trump administration rolled out new China tariffs in April, Beijing retaliated by restricting US access to rare-earth magnets and other products the United States can only get from China\u2014moves that threatened the wider US economy. In October, China rolled out even more restrictions, ostensibly in response to a US Commerce Department action (though more likely as part of a long-running Chinese government plan to lock down rare earths). These moves sent the White House scrambling to deescalate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The White House readout<\/a> from the Trump-Xi meeting states that \u201cChina will issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony, and graphite for the benefit of U.S. end users and their suppliers around the world,\u201d and that this move amounts to \u201cthe de facto removal of controls China imposed since 2023.\u201d Many in Washington also assume that Beijing will stand by as the United States works with allies and partners to bring alternative rare-earth supply online so that, once the one-year truce times out, China will no longer have this lever to use against the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Beijing has found a magic lever, and Chinese leaders are unlikely to relinquish it easily. From their perspective, that one lever got them to a state of parity with Washington and brought Trump under control. Why would they give it up? Beijing did not issue a readout of the Trump-Xi meeting that gets into as much detail as Washington\u2019s. The most authoritative readout came via a Ministry of Commerce press conference<\/a> on October 30, in which a ministry spokesperson stated that, in parallel with the United States suspending its \u201c50 percent rule\u201d for export controls, \u201cChina will suspend its related export control measures announced on October 9 for one year and will study and refine specific plans.\u201d <\/p>\n The devil is in the details, and China has not publicly committed to many specifics when it comes to rare-earth exports. Two hiccups are likely. The first is that, although China has begun issuing licenses to specific companies, those licenses will not be as \u201cgeneral\u201d and broad-brush as the Trump administration is hoping for. The second: Beijing may seek to undermine US plans to bring new rare-earth projects online. China did just that in previous decades, by dumping rare earths on the global market at low prices that no one else could match, putting alternative mines and processing facilities out of business.<\/p>\n As Washington works to bring new rare-earth projects online throughout 2026, no one should expect Beijing to sit on the sidelines. Instead, China will most likely use its current market position to make it as expensive and difficult as possible for Washington to escape Beijing\u2019s vise in this sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n 3. China is deploying artificial intelligence and robotics at scale<\/p>\n Our group toured an advanced factory using artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to speed up manufacturing. We also rode in robotaxis under development around Beijing. The pace and scale of China\u2019s domestic \u201cAI + robotics\u201d deployment is striking. Beijing is creating space for companies to quickly deploy the technologies in manufacturing and consumer products. Robots are becoming ubiquitous around Beijing. The technology is not perfect, but companies are pushing it out anyway and tweaking it as they go. And, in many cases, the technology is pretty darn good.\u00a0<\/p>\n We spent nearly an hour riding in Pony.ai robotaxis around Beijing. I haven\u2019t ridden in a Waymo (they aren\u2019t available yet for consumer use in Washington, DC), but we had a few folks in our group who have spent substantial time in Waymo taxis, and they reported that Pony.ai delivered a higher-quality driving experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n Washington needs to understand two facts that we witnessed on the ground. First, the new generation of Chinese technology is\u2014at least in some sectors\u2014as good or better than what US companies are producing. Second, China is deploying AI faster than the United States is, and that trend is about to go global. US companies are spending way too much time competing with each other and fretting over who will get to artificial general intelligence (AGI) faster. China, in contrast, is doubling down on deployment. And deployment is the ultimate success metric. US companies should focus more on this global deployment competition, and much of that will come down to cost. <\/p>\n If US firms can\u2019t figure out how to deliver AI solutions at costs global markets are willing to pay, then it will be expensive Western alternatives versus the ubiquitous Huawei deal all over again.\u00a0<\/p>\n 4. Members of Congress\u2014and their staff\u2014 should visit China<\/p>\n In the months before this trip, I heard multiple congressional staffers cite the saying that \u201cChina doesn\u2019t innovate.\u201d If the United States just cuts China off from American technology, they reasoned, then Washington will stay ahead of Beijing. Those staffers need to do some fieldwork.\u00a0<\/p>\n Multiple things can be true at once. Yes, intellectual-property theft by China is a major issue. Yes, Beijing siphons off US technological know-how to boost Chinese companies at the expense of US companies. Yes, Beijing tilts the global economic playing field in its favor, and the United States should do more to counter that. Yes, there are major weaknesses across China\u2019s domestic economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n But China is a big country. A lot of things\u2014contradictory things\u2014are happening at once. That includes some stunning innovation. US policymakers need to understand exactly how the China model is working in 2025 if the United States is going to compete effectively with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n If members of Congress really understood the current nature of the China competition, then they would surely realize, for example, that the United States doesn\u2019t have enough leeway to gut the National Institutes of Health and other science funding and still maintain the remaining leads the country has. The United States now has a peer competitor. That competitor is already leading<\/a> in some technology sectors, and it is gearing up quickly in others. American business leaders know this, but they are currently struggling with how to convince Washington that the US government needs to put more effort into running faster. Export controls and other such measures are important, but they are no longer enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bottom lines up front BEIJING\u2014The United States will not prevail in its competition with China if it does…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-344612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-04-24T133630Z_1103767814_MT1SIPA0007G8TDD_RTRMADP_3_SIPA-USA-1024x643.jpg\")
Visitors view an L4-level driverless electric vehicle at the Pony.ai booth at the 2025 Shanghai International Auto Show on April 24, 2025. (Photo by CFOTO\/Sipa USA via Reuters)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-11-22T063953Z_1051819960_RC2XUHADKZBY_RTRMADP_3_TRAVEL-CM-BEIJING-1024x714.jpg\")
People stand at an observation deck with a view on office buildings of Beijing\u2019s central business district on November 12, 2025. (REUTERS\/Maxim Shemetov)<\/p>\n