Washington: Treasurer Jim Chalmers will be asked to join a US-led fight against China’s latest attempts to control global supplies of critical minerals as he arrives in Washington for a financial summit days before Anthony Albanese meets Donald Trump.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said allies including Australia would present a “fulsome 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 containing even small traces of minerals sourced from China.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US was pursuing a co-ordinated response with allies including Australia.Credit: AP
“This is China versus the world. It’s not a US-China problem,” Bessent said at a Washington event hosted by television network CNBC.
“We’re going to be speaking with our European allies, with Australia, with Canada, with India and the Asian democracies, and we’re going to have a fulsome group response to this because bureaucrats in China cannot manage the supply chain or the manufacturing process for the rest of the world.”
“We have lots of levers that we can pull for products that they [China] need that could be equally damaging. We’re going to assert sovereignty; so are the Western allies.”
Bessent noted his counterparts were in town for a World Bank and International Monetary Fund summit this week. That includes Chalmers, who is due to meet Trump’s National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, and global investors in New York, among others.
Jim Chalmers visited Washington in February where he met US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in this photo supplied by the Australian embassy.Credit: Michael Butcher Photography.
At a separate news conference in Washington, United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also referred to Australia, noting it had previously been the victim of retaliatory trade actions by China, along with the US, Europe and Canada.
The new Chinese controls, if enacted, would mean that “if a smartphone is made in Korea and sold to Australia, then the company would first need to get China’s approval, since the phone contains semiconductors which may contain rare earths sourced from China”.
