President Trump’s trade team has drawn a clear red line with Beijing after U.S. officials say China failed to live up to commitments reached in Geneva — most notably by slow-walking export licenses for rare earth minerals vital to our chips and defense industries. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer blistered the tactic on air, calling China’s “slow-rolling” of compliance “completely unacceptable” and warning the administration will respond.
The Geneva understanding was supposed to ease crippling supply restrictions and get critical minerals flowing again to American manufacturers; instead, the Chinese appear to be choking off access while pretending to negotiate. That’s not diplomacy — it’s economic coercion, plain and simple, and it threatens everything from our industrial base to national security.
President Trump reacted as any commander-in-chief should: publicly calling out the violation and refusing to let American industries be held hostage. This administration’s willingness to slap reciprocal measures — and to threaten sweeping tariffs as leverage — is the kind of hardball the weak-kneed career diplomats never took seriously. Greer’s line that the behavior “has to be addressed” is the right kind of bluntness we need in Washington.
Beyond rare earths, the administration is using every tool to press China to cooperate on the fentanyl crisis that is slaughtering our kids, and senior officials have signaled that getting the Chinese to act may require direct presidential engagement. The American people should not tolerate a world power that stonewalls on trade while failing to crack down on poisons flowing into our communities. If China won’t play fair, we must make it costly.
Let’s be honest: decades of outsourcing and naiveté left us desperate for minerals Beijing controls, and China knows it. That leverage has been weaponized, and the only language authoritarians respect is consequences — tariffs, export controls, and industrial policy that brings mining and processing back to American soil under secure, friendly oversight. Patriotic manufacturing is not a luxury; it’s survival.
The Trump team is right to say diplomatic niceties end where American livelihoods and security begin. If the Chinese continue to flout agreements, the administration should ramp up targeted economic pressure while fast-tracking domestic alternatives and working with allies to diversify supply chains. Weakness invites more aggression; resolve forces respect.
Hardworking Americans shouldn’t be told to swallow shortages and higher prices because other countries play dirty. Stand with a government that defends our industries, demands accountability from Beijing, and refuses to let American prosperity be bargained away. It’s time to turn rhetoric into action and put America’s strategic interests first.
