White House says China to lift rare earth export bans, stop probes into US tech companies

Last week’s trade talks between the USA and China have seen the two countries ease some trade restrictions. According to a fact sheet published by the White House on Saturday, the talks resulted in China lifting restrictions on the export of rare earths – the minerals needed to make most high-tech products. Beijing also …

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

WhiteHouse says China will play nicely

The US State Dept has been unable to confirm if the Chinese delegation had their fingers crossed

[NoneSuch]

Re: WhiteHouse says China will play nicely

If China is being that nice, Trump just gave them Taiwan.

[beast666]

Re: WhiteHouse says China will play nicely

Err, Taiwan is already China.

[IGotOut]

Re: WhiteHouse says China will play nicely

OK comrade.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

"White House says..."

The White House says an awful lot of things. An increasingly small proportion of them are true.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "White House says..."

Can we take a moment to consider that we now trust the CCP's accounts of the meeting more than our own president

[DS999]

Re: "White House says..."

Even in his first administration when he'd meet with Putin alone we got more information from Russia regarding what was discussed than we got from Trump. Now that's the case with all of his foreign "policy".

We shouldn't even use the word "policy" for it, since it is just based on the whims of an old man in clear mental decline. It is like if AI vibe coding methodology was used for foreign relations.

[heyrick]

Re: "White House says..."

"the whims of an old man in clear mental decline"

The country does seem to have a thing about voting ancient people to be President. They really ought to draw a line between "old enough to have life experience" and "old enough to be nursing home fodder".

[DS999]

Re: "White House says..."

If I had a say I'd make it so you can't assume office after your 70th birthday. In effect for president, VP, senate and house. The only exception would be a VP who was sworn in before his 70th birthday could assume the office of president by succession.

[Gary Stewart]

Re: "White House says..."

"An increasingly small proportion of them are true."

Crossed into negative infinity before the first election was held. Gone well beyond since then.

[Dan 55]

2TB... will be useful “for backing up WhatsApp”

And training Gemini on unencrypted WhatsApp database backups (most of them). Nothing's free.

[m4r35n357]

Re: 2TB... will be useful “for backing up WhatsApp”

Just shovel all your data and pesonal info into the giant gob provided.

[Jellied Eel]

Nexperia

... which retaliated with an export ban of some Nexperia products made in the Middle Kingdom.

This one got interesting given the Dutch stole Nexperia in the interests of national security. Then seemed to have discovered they've seized a mostly fabless HQ building that probably quickly emptied of Chinese staff and IP. Meanwhile, Nexperia's production facilities in China keep churning out chips, except the EU isn't getting any. Or maybe some of the output from Nexperia fab plants in Manchester and Hamburg. Which also seemed a little odd as an industry outsider, ie apparently EU fab plants had to send their product to China for packaging. So visions of wafers being shipped to China where precision bandsaws chop them up.

But-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexperia#Products

So kinda curious what the impact will be. Nexperia didn't seem to focus on the 'sexy' <10nm CPUs & GPUs, just churning out millions of the glue components needed to make electronics. Which must be problematic for EU manufacturers that depend on those components, if they're now embargoed.