Comments by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro that the United States will “end” China’s position in the rare-earth market and “quickly wipe away” what he called China’s “weaponization” are being criticized by Chinese experts as provocative, inaccurate, and detached from how the global rare-earth supply chain actually works.
Navarro made the remarks in an interview on Bloomberg’s The Mishal Husain Show, arguing that American “industrial breakthroughs” would boost domestic production and eliminate China’s market strength in rare earths. He further claimed China had been “flexing its muscles” toward Europe, India, and the US, suggesting Beijing was threatening to cut off critical minerals if challenged and portrayed China’s resource governance as coercive.
Chinese analysts rejected that framing, calling it “highly unprofessional and nonsensical,” and arguing that it wrongly characterizes natural resources and lawful export management as a geopolitical weapon.
He Weiwen, a senior fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, said the core premise of Navarro’s argument is flawed: rare earths are naturally occurring resources, not manufactured products that can be “monopolized” in the way political rhetoric often implies. What matters most in the modern rare-earth economy is not simply who has deposits, but who has built the complex industrial capability to turn ore into usable materials.
Developing rare earths involves “capital-intensive, high-barrier processes such as mining, smelting and refining,” He said, noting that these are industrial resources “shared by humanity as a whole.” In his view, it is misleading to label China’s role a “monopoly” when its position reflects decades of accumulated know-how, integrated industrial ecosystems, and cost efficiencies, especially in processing.
He stressed that China’s comparative advantage lies particularly in smelting and refining. Depending on the category and processing stage, China accounts for close to 90% of global rare-earth refining capacity, he said, an edge built over time through technology and industrial coordination, not through the type of exclusive control implied by “monopoly.” International figures cited in the Bloomberg report point in the same direction: the International Energy Agency estimates that China holds more than 90% of global rare-earth and permanent-magnet refining capacity, while second-place Malaysia has about 4%.
Navarro’s remarks also revived controversy over China’s export management measures. Chinese officials have repeatedly stated that these policies are grounded in domestic law and align with international nonproliferation objectives.
At a press briefing in October last year, China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said rare-earth export control measures were enacted in accordance with relevant laws and regulations to improve the export control system. MOFCOM emphasized that the measures are intended to prevent illegal diversion to improper uses such as weapons of mass destruction and to safeguard national security and “global common security.”
MOFCOM has also stressed that these steps do not constitute an export ban, and that compliant civilian-use applications will be approved. On October 30, MOFCOM said it would suspend for one year the implementation of certain export control measures announced on October 9 while studying more detailed arrangements. In early November, MOFCOM spokesperson He Yadong said China was willing to strengthen communication and cooperation, optimize licensing procedures, and adopt facilitation tools such as general licenses to promote compliant trade.
From this perspective, experts argue that Navarro’s language about “weaponization” and threats to “take away” minerals misrepresents regulatory policy as aggression while ignoring the stated compliance and licensing pathways.
He Weiwen argued that rare-earth exports had not historically been a major source of international controversy, and that today’s tensions stem less from the resources themselves than from the politicization of supply chains.
In his assessment, some countries are injecting “Cold War-era thinking and geopolitical calculations” into what was previously a highly integrated system. The resulting fragmentation through tariff escalation, strategic decoupling initiatives, and increasingly securitized trade narratives risks turning industrial inputs into geopolitical flashpoints.
Navarro used the same Bloomberg interview to urge the European Union to adopt US-level tariffs on Chinese goods, calling on Europe to “adopt the same level of tariffs that we adopt.” He argued that higher US tariffs reduce China’s ability to sell into the US, and that China then “dumps it in Europe” or elsewhere, language that Chinese observers say conflates price competitiveness with dumping and invites broader protectionism.
Jian Junbo, director of the Center for China-Europe Relations at Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies, said equating China’s cost advantages with dumping distorts basic economic realities and is designed to pressure Europe to restrict China’s exports and curb its industrial upgrading. Such actions, Jian said, could damage multilateral trade relations and ultimately backfire on those who impose them by undermining long-term economic interests. He also noted that “trade diversion” is inherently two-way: if Europe faces restrictions on exports to the US, European firms may redirect more exports to China, offsetting the impact. In that context, he argued, attributing shifts in China-EU trade patterns to alleged Chinese dumping “does not hold up.”Jian further emphasized that China’s competitiveness and trade surpluses are not the result of “deliberate design or manipulation,” but rather the result of decades of evolution in the global division of labor and market competition. Over time, he said, China built a comprehensive manufacturing system across low-, mid-, and high-end segments through the interaction of global capital, technology flows, labor, and market choices.
He added that Europe has also benefited materially from China’s manufacturing strength, including by easing inflation pressures, lowering consumer costs, and supplying high-value intermediate goods that support European industrial competitiveness, evidence, in his view, of structural interdependence rather than one-sided coercion.
The Bloomberg report notes that Washington has continued pursuing policies intended to reduce reliance on Chinese magnets used widely in autos, electronics, and other consumer products, including discussions with allied countries on critical minerals and supply-chain coordination. Navarro also referenced diplomacy as a bridge strategy, “in the meantime,” even while using harsh language toward China’s leadership.
Still, critics argue there is a gap between the rhetoric of “wiping away” China’s role and the industrial reality that rare-earth processing capacity cannot be quickly replicated. Building mines, separation facilities, refining plants, environmental compliance systems, and downstream magnet production typically takes years, major capital investment, and stable market incentives, especially given the boom-bust cycles that have historically plagued rare-earth projects outside China. In that light, Chinese experts describe Navarro’s remarks not as a serious assessment of supply-chain economics, but as inflammatory messaging that risks escalating trade tensions, particularly by encouraging Europe to align with US tariff strategies and by portraying lawful export controls as threats.
What emerges from both the policy record and industry data is a more complex picture than the one Navarro offered: rare-earth supply chains are deeply industrial, technologically layered, and globally interdependent, and attempts to frame them as a simple contest of “dominance” and “weaponization” may generate political heat while doing little to solve the underlying capacity and coordination challenges.