China vs Trump-1 2019 (PREVIEW)

 Last update: Saturday 2/14/26 5:35pm

PREVIEW ... Deng Xiaoping,  the 'father of modern China', implored his country's leaders in 1992 to greatly enhance its power by attaining a position of unchallengeable dominance of the world's mining and refining of rare earth elements (REEs). REEs are a small, but ultra critical componentsof the 'Big Technology' infrastructures of the civilian and military sectors of modern economies. China's dominance would provide it with a chokehold on their massive trillion dollar operations.

Unfortunately for the global ambitions of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, who took office  in 2017, China's decades long preparations resulted in its achievement of Deng's strategic ambitions when it inflicted an ironic 'pyrrhic victory' on the outgoing Obama administration in 2015. China's knockout punches under the leadership of President Xi Jinping (pictured above) were described in the previous installment of this series of reports.

Note: All previous installments (and previews when available) can be reached through the Master Menu

Op-Ed ➡ HERE

Introduction

This preview will be brief because the full report that will be written in the next few days will be brief. From 2016 until the beginning of the Biden administration in 2017, China's 'rare earth power' surged for two reasons:

• China strengthened its dominance of refined earth production by enabling the revival of the largest foreign mines via multi-year contracts that required them to sell all of their ores to China, the world's most voracious purchaser of rare earths ores.
  
  
• The U.S. government did not clearly perceive the power of China's chokehold until 2019 when China bluntly threatened to stop selling refined rare earths to the U.S. Only then did the U.S. leadership acknowledge its existential need for a reliable source of these critical materials. But given China's success in signing up exclusive multi-year access to the ores from the largest mines outside of China, the U.S. had few options, if any.
  

Note: This preview only presents findings; links to reputable sources that support these findings will appear in the forthcoming report.

1. Xi Jinping | 2. DoD Confusion | 3. Tariffs & Huawei | 

4. Blunt Threat | 5. Greenland | Master Menu

1) President Xi Jinping

Patient, focused, and indomitable .... This section will list some of the exclusive, multi-year deals that China, under Xi's leadership, signed since it began to drive foreign mines into bankruptcy in 2016. These deals greatly reduced the options available to the U.S. in its quest for reliable alternative sources of rare earths

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2) DoD confusion

Prior dimwitted DoD advice to President Obama seemed to carry over for a while

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3) Trump's tariffs & Huawei sanctions

• Trump announced tariffs on China
• Trump imposed sanctions on Huawei that crippled Huawei

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4) China's blunt threat

• China ignored Trump's tariffs
• In 2019, China's response to the Huawei sanctions was a hostile "reminder" that it could stop selling rare earths to the U.S. ... and thereby deprive the U.S. of all rare earths

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5) Trump's response ➡ Greenland 

• Trump was stunned, but took necessary steps to launch an effective defense 
• He also announced his intention to buy Greenland (assuming he was re-elected) which was a logical option, perhaps the only option.
• Greenland and Denmark expressed surprise, indignation, and rejection ... Was it because Trump made his announcement in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, instead of in an intimate chat-with-brandy at Mar-a-largo with leaders of Greenland and Denmark? If so, China didn't win this match by a TKO; Trump lost by an 'own goal' akin to Obama's 'pyrrhic victory'.

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