Looks Like China Is Dragging Feet On Its End Of Trump Trade Truce

China is stalling the exports of rare earth magnets, despite promising earlier this month to ease restrictions under a trade deal with the Trump administration, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

The agreement, struck during a recent meeting in London to revive a trade truce initially brokered in Geneva this May, included a pledge from Chinese authorities to ease export controls on rare earth elements and lower tariffs on U.S. goods to 10%. However, Western manufacturers say they are still struggling to secure adequate supplies, according to the WSJ.

“Yes, the export restrictions have been paused on paper. However, ground reality is completely different,” Neha Mukherjee, a rare-earths analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, told the WSJ, describing the licensing process to the WSJ as a “bureaucratic drag.”

Between 2020 and 2023, China supplied roughly 70% of the U.S.’s rare earth metal imports, according to a January report from the U.S. Geological Survey. The country holds an estimated 44 million tons of rare earth reserves, compared to just 1.9 million tons held by the U.S.