3 weeks ago
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The US is letting China take the lead in clean electrical technologies such as rare earths, solar panels and lithium-ion batteries, says David Fickling for the Bloomberg Opinion.
SYDNEY: In retrospect, the symbolism of the moment was foreboding.
On May 15, 2019, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning US firms from doing business with Chinese telecommunications companies, including Huawei Technologies.
Five days after that first broadside in a brewing trade-and-technology war, President Xi Jinping was photographed touring a factory producing rare-earth magnets.
Such devices, his visit seemed to imply, could be a geopolitical weapon for China quite as potent as advanced semiconductors are for the US.
Six years later, those battle lines are hardening. In the first major US-China trade dispute of Trump’s second term, Beijing was able to use its control of rare earths to
English (US)