Special: China's Firework of crippling Regulation to welcome Trump - and to sink China's last remaining friend in the EU

Rare Earth 5 January 2025 #163

Brief note

Happy New Year!

This post is a short but explosive one.

Adding to the to-do-list of problems to solve within Trump’s first day in office, over the year’s end China has published new sanctions and proposes crippling adjusted regulation.

True to Prof John Mearsheimer, politics trump economics?

With China entering a prolonged phase that may well resemble Japan’s lost decade, China’s politicians don’t seem to care anymore about economic self-harm, whether it is the trade war or a ruinous invasion of Taiwan.

China’s call to order to exuberant Chinese battery companies not only kills battery projects in the U.S. and elsewhere, it also creates a sobering disaster for China’s last remaining friend in the EU.

Regulation in the pipeline gives Trump exactly one week in office to start reversing course, correct his erroneous views and beg for forgiveness. This is not exactly what Trump is known for. He is a friend of Big Oil and exited the Paris Agreement before. Trump couldn’t possibly care less about EV, if it wasn’t for his most ardent supporter Tesla-Musk.

We bring you:

• The full list of China-sanctioned U.S. defense companies,

• A broad analysis of the impact of proposed additions to the Revised Catalog of Technologies Prohibited and Restricted from Export in China

• The rare earth relevant content of China’s state planners’ Guidance Catalogue for Industrial Structure Adjustment

• Certainty over the recent unusual movements of the cerium price.

Read on.