Trump threatens 200% tariff on China over magnet export curbs
US President Donald Trump during a meeting with Lee Jae Myung, South Korea’s president, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Aug. 25, 2025.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday stateside warned of steeper tariffs on China if exports of rare-earth magnets were curbed, threatening a precarious trade truce between the world’s two largest economies.
“They have to give us magnets, if they don’t give us magnets, then we have to charge them 200% tariffs or something,” Trump told reporters after a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the White House on Monday.
Trump also said that airplane parts were a key leverage that Washington has to counter Beijing’s grip on rare earths: “200 of their planes were unable to fly because we were not giving them Boeing parts purposely because they weren’t giving us magnets.”
Boeing has been working toward a deal to sell as many as 500 aircraft to China, with both sides finalizing the details such as jet models, types and delivery schedules, Bloomberg reported, underscoring the role of airplane jets in a potential U.S.-China trade deal.
