In response to China’s imposition of new export controls and other measures, President Trump has announced a 100 percent increase in tariffs on imports from the People’s Republic of China. That’s in addition to the current tariffs of 30 percent. Unless the president changes course again before November 1, the trade truce between the two nations that has been in wobbly effect for several months is over (CNN, October 10, 2025).
“The United States of America will impose a Tariff of 100% on China, over and above any Tariff that they are currently paying,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social Friday afternoon. “Also on November 1st, we will impose Export Controls on any and all critical software.”
Trump’s announcement is tied to Beijing ramping up export controls on its critical rare earths, which are needed to produce many electronics. As a result, Trump appeared to call off a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping that was scheduled for later this month in South Korea.
Trump’s initial message Friday, delivered via a Truth Social post, in which he threatened “massive” new tariffs, was ill received by investors on Friday as fears of a spring déjà vu, when tariffs on Chinese goods soared to a stunning 145%, set in. Markets closed sharply lower on Friday after Trump’s initial comments, with the Dow falling by 878 points, or 1.9%. The S&P 500 was down 2.7%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 3.5%.
The CCN reporter says that up until now the trade talks had featured “several apparent breakthroughs” (nebulous “trade frameworks”?). Nevertheless, Trump, presumably inexplicably in the view of the reporter, “has in recent months repeatedly accused China of violating the terms.”
Define “expedite”
In June 2025, the U.S. and news reports or both were claiming that China had agreed to expedite export of rare earths to the United States after having interrupted the flow in April. “ ‘Expedite’?” James Roth asked in a July 6 column for StoptheCCP.org. “Start with the fact that all previously approved export licenses must be reapproved. Also, that the communists have instituted a new review process that takes at least 45 days.”
A recent Associated Press story notes that although China and the U.S. had “agreed to ratchet down tariffs after negotiations in Switzerland and the United Kingdom…China has continued to restrict America’s access to the difficult-to-mine rare earths needed for a wide array of U.S. technologies.
“There is already a backlog of export license applications from Beijing’s previous round of export controls on rare earth elements, and the latest announcements ‘add further complexity to the global supply chain of rare earth elements,’ the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said in a statement.”
The president’s declarations on China and trade are not necessarily consistent, not even within the same few sentences. In announcing his disappointment with the China’s new trade restrictions on Truth Social, Trump said both that “Our relationship with China over the past six months has been a very good one, thereby making this move on Trade an even more surprising one” and also, in the very next sentence, “I have always felt that they’ve been lying in wait….” Mr. President, why were you surprised by the explosion of “great Trade hostility, which came out of nowhere,” if you “have always felt they’ve been lying in wait…”?
Still, Trump cannot be accused of the impenetrable naivete about China of many earlier U.S. presidents.
China’s new restrictions on rare earths—which in addition to other measures, like retaliatory fees on U.S. ships docking in China, most immediately provoked U.S. resumption of 130 percent tariffs on Chinese goods—are simply more of what we have seen in lesser degree during the trade-war pause. Since the start of the truce in April, the Chinese Communist Party has all along been trying to see how much it could get away with, and it now seems to have discovered the upper limit.
Also see: StoptheCCP.org: The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of Rare Earths
