US Trade Representative Greer Calls China’s Rare Earth Controls ‘Completely Disproportionate’: Report

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Tuesday reportedly stated that China’s rare earth controls announced last week came “out of nowhere,” while expressing optimism about resolving the dispute with the Xi Jinping administration.

Speaking during an interview with CNBC, Greer described China’s rare earth controls as “completely disproportionate.” He added that the Trump administration could still follow through on the new 100% tariffs on China, or implement them even sooner, but noted that “a lot depends on what the Chinese do.”

“They are the ones who have chosen to make this major escalation,” Greer said. He defended the U.S.’s export controls on semiconductors, stating that every country has very specific export controls that are product-specific, company-specific, and sometimes country-specific.

“What the Chinese are doing is broad. It’s on the whole world… a broad range of products that contain a tiny 0.1% of it is rare earth materials, and they’re doing it to low-tech stuff. The rare earth materials here, these are things that the United States pioneered 60 years ago. It’s basic materials they’re trying to control,” Greer said in the interview.

As for the scheduled meeting between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping, Greer said he does not want to “precommit,” even though Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday that he believes that the meeting will “still be on.”

On Friday, President Trump stated that there seems to be no reason to meet with President Xi following the export control announcement. “I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Meanwhile, U.S. equities gained in Tuesday morning’s trade. At the time of writing, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500 index, was up 0.32%, the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (QQQ) rose 0.04%, while the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust (DIA) gained 0.73%. Retail sentiment around the S&P 500 ETF on Stocktwits was in the ‘neutral’ territory.

Also See: Jamie Dimon Sees ‘Early Signs’ Of Excess In Corporate Lending Amid Bankruptcies In US Auto Market: Report

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