America and China return to fierce trade conflict

From The Economist

China’s leaders have long recognised that rare earths are its best weapon in an age of economic warfare. They have therefore been keen to build a regulatory framework that would let them make the most of this weapon, if need be.

The new rules fit into that project. They extend the weapon’s reach far beyond earlier controls. The licence requirements apply, at least on paper, to any product that contains trace amounts of Chinese rare earths, even if that product is sold by a foreign company to a foreign customer. They also apply to products that contain no Chinese rare earths at all, if they were made with Chinese mining, smelting or magnet-making technologies. The rules will be formidably difficult to monitor and enforce. But in principle they claim the kind of “long-arm” jurisdiction that so infuriates China when America resorts to it.