US calls on Australia in rare earths fight with Beijing
Washington: Chancellor of the Exchequer Jim Chalmers, who arrived in Washington for a financial summit days before Anthony Albanese meets Donald Trump, will be asked to join the US-led fight against China’s latest attempts to control global supplies of critical minerals.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said allies including Australia will offer a “nasty response” to Beijing’s plan to expand export controls on rare earths, such as a sweeping new requirement for companies worldwide to seek approval to export products from China containing trace amounts of the mineral.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the United States was seeking a coordinated response with allies, including Australia.Credit: access point
“This is China fighting against the world. This is not a US-China problem,” Bessent said at a Washington event hosted by the CNBC television network.
“We’ll be talking to our European allies, Australia, Canada, India and the Asian democracies, and we’re going to get intense pushback from groups because the bureaucrats in China can’t manage the supply chain or the production process for the rest of the world.”
“We have a lot of levers we can pull for the products they demand. [China] a need that could be equally damaging. We will claim sovereignty; So are Western allies.”
Bessent noted that his counterparts were in the city this week for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund summit. This includes Kevin Hassett, director of Trump’s National Economic Council, and Chalmers, who will meet with global investors in New York.
Jim Chalmers visited Washington in February, where he met U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in this photo provided by the Australian embassy.Credit: Michael Butcher Photo.
At a separate press conference in Washington, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also touched on Australia, noting that Australia, along with the US, Europe and Canada, has previously been the victim of retaliatory trade actions by China.
If enacted, the new Chinese controls would mean that “if a smartphone is produced in Korea and sold to Australia, the company will first need to seek Chinese approval as the phone contains semiconductors sourced from China that may contain rare earths.”
