Trump ally Steve Daines urges US-China dialogue amid rare earth tensions

‘No retreat’: Key Trump ally urges continued US-China engagement on rare earths

US Republican Senator Steve Daines, a close aide to President Donald Trump and a key interlocutor between Washington and Beijing, has urged the two capitals to remain engaged despite their differences over rare earth supply chains and other issues.

Daines said both sides needed to continue working through their disagreements rather than step back from discussions.

Daines calls for continued dialogue

Speaking to the South China Morning Post, Daines said the two countries still had issues that predated Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington last week.

He said those issues would continue to be addressed after the summit, indicating that the meeting had not resolved all differences between Washington and Beijing.

“So that’s again why it’s really important to keep the dialogue going on between two countries because both sides admit we’ve got some serious differences. But the answer is not to retreat. The answer is to stay engaged,” Daines said.

His remarks put continued communication at the centre of efforts to manage disagreements over critical minerals and other matters between the two countries.

Critical minerals remain a point of tension

The outgoing senator from Montana was responding to comments by US ambassador to China David Perdue.

Perdue had accused Beijing of “weaponising” its “single-source dominant position” on critical minerals against the rest of the world.

Daines’s call for engagement came against the backdrop of that accusation and the wider disagreement over supply chains for rare earths and other critical minerals.

While acknowledging that Washington and Beijing had serious differences, Daines argued that continued dialogue, not retreat, was the way forward.

Source: South China Morning Post