by Kirill Novikov
[REGNUM] The outgoing year was marked by another round of US-Chinese tariff confrontation, and by the end of 2024 it reached a new level.
On December 3, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce imposed a ban on the export of gallium, germanium, antimony, and several other superhard materials (it is not specified which ones) to the United States. And just a day later, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced sanctions against a number of American companies: Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc, BRINC Drones Inc, and Shield AI Inc.
The sanctions were imposed after the Pentagon gave its prior consent to supply Taiwan with spare parts for F-16 fighters and radars. China views this as an attack on its own territorial integrity.
As for materials prohibited for export, antimony is widely used in the defense industry. It is found in explosive caps used in firearms cartridges, grenade fuses, and artillery shells. In 2018, the U.S. Department of the Interior added antimony to the list of metals of critical importance to national security, but America has not mined it since 2001, when the Sunshine mine in Idaho closed.
The largest suppliers of antimony are China and Russia, with the former accounting for 54.5% of global production in 2022. The US risks losing a resource that is fundamentally important for its defense industry.
Gallium is actively used in the production of radio frequency chips for mobile and satellite communications, display LEDs, as well as in aviation and space technology. It is used to create microcircuits capable of supporting stable operation of 4th and 5th generation wireless networks (4G and 5G), which play a decisive role in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Germanium is needed for the defense industry, in particular for the production of night vision devices, as well as for the manufacture of solar panels.
Both elements play a huge role in areas such as high-speed communications and renewable energy production, and there is nothing to replace them with today; there are no analogues.
The main supplier of gallium and germanium is China. It produces 80% of gallium-containing products and accounts for 60 % of the world's germanium production.
By imposing sanctions, China seeks to weaken the US position and deprive it of the resources necessary for the development of information technology and AI.
The current situation is a new round of the tariff war between China and the United States, which began back in 2016, when Donald Trump first took the presidential seat in the White House.
His rise to political prominence began with a sharp criticism of the trade deficit and deep interdependence of the Chinese and American economies, which led to a serious loss of jobs in America (2.7 million between 2001 and 2011). That is why Trump won broad support among workers in the 2016 election, promising to bring manufacturing back to America.
But he also accused China of manipulating its own currency and stealing American technology, expressing concern about China's advances in high technology. From the US perspective, the authoritarian state's leadership in this area is an existential threat.
It may seem paradoxical, but the Democratic Party of the United States, which is fundamentally hostile to Trump, has continued his line of economic struggle with China.
Although Joe Biden has avoided criticizing China purely rhetorically, and even before the elections, he accused Republicans of speculating on the Chinese issue (in response, Trump has repeatedly stated that he was “bribed” by China), however, already as US President, he has in fact renounced these words.
Yes, his administration has emphasized that the confrontation between the countries is “competition,” not “rivalry” (a position that Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended in his article ), but even in the latest US National Security Strategy (October 2022), it is China that is designated as the “main competitor” capable of revising the world order.
Trump's tariff policy was continued by Biden without any significant changes, most of the previous duties were retained, and some were even increased.
The Democratic administration has focused on fighting China in the high-tech sector. For example, in 2023, the sale of Huawei equipment and technology was banned in America, and in April of this year, the US threatened to ban the TikTok social network if it was not sold to the US within nine months — the “Protecting Americans from Apps Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act.” The title of the document speaks for itself.
In early December 2024, America imposed sanctions on 140 Chinese chip companies (which triggered the Chinese restrictions mentioned at the beginning), including Naura Technology Group, AMC Research, Skyverse Technology, Empyrean Technology. At the same time, the US imposed export controls on high-bandwidth memory chips, which are important components for AI applications.
The Democratic Party's interest in high technology is due to the fact that it receives significant support from information and telecommunications companies.
The history of tariff wars between China and the United States clearly shows that neoliberal globalization is currently experiencing its own crisis.
This has affected even its most consistent apologists, the US Democratic Party, which rhetorically defends the old values of free trade, but in fact moves away from them, adopting elements of the policies of its main opponent.
Of course, the economic interdependence between China and the United States cannot be broken overnight without damage to both sides, but the opponents do not intend to retreat and are still set on further escalation of the tariff war.
They are not ready to give up the benefits acquired in the conditions of globalization, but they put their own national interests first. The outgoing year demonstrated this with complete clarity, and 2025 will certainly provide many more clear confirmations of this conclusion.
