President Trump Tells China: FAFO

The kids have a saying these days, “FAFO.” 

If you don’t have a Gen Zer in the house, let me translate: “F— around and find out.”

That’s what President Donald Trump told the Communist government of China on Friday afternoon when he announced an additional 100% tariff on all Chinese products over and above all existing tariffs.  Earlier last week, the Communist government of China announced that it would impose new export restrictions on rare earth minerals that are critical components to semiconductors, electric vehicles, and fighter jets.  

President Trump’s 100% tariff order is the toughest action that any government has taken against China since the British took control of Hong Kong with the Treaty of Nanking.

“China has taken an extraordinarily aggressive position on Trade in sending an extremely hostile letter to the World,” President Trump posted on TruthSocial. “This affects ALL Countries, without exception, and was obviously a plan devised by them years ago. It is absolutely unheard of in International Trade, and a moral disgrace in dealing with other Nations.”

President Trump understands that rare earths are a serious national security issue. We can’t make missiles, submarines, or fighter jets without them. Unfortunately, under the Biden administration, the United States fell asleep in the critical race to control the 17 metallic elements that are necessary for the technologies of the future. 

“The United States is currently behind in that competition,” writes Karl Friedhoff, the Marshall M. Bouton Fellow for Asia Studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “It is being out-invested, out-innovated, and out-educated.” 

The United States cannot lose the rare earth minerals race with China.  They’re used in everything from our smartphones to robots and wind turbines. 

“China has an absolute dominance here,” Graceline Baskaran, the director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says of China’s control of the world’s rare earth mineral supply. “The difficulty is that China actually processes nearly 100% of these, which means not only do they mine them, but they source heavy rare earths from around the world, bring them back and separate them.” 

China saw its rare earth monopoly as a tactical advantage heading into a meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping that was scheduled for later this month at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in South Korea.

The Chinese made a major miscalculation.

In recent months, the Trump administration has been open and constructive in its negotiations with China. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had a positive meeting in late July that seemingly eased trade tensions.  The Chinese interpreted the Trump administration’s grace as a sign of weakness. Who can blame them? 

From Democrat Congressman Eric Swalwell’s notorious Chinese spy scandal to Hunter Biden’s corrupt business deals with China, Democrat politicians have spent the past half-century being willfully ignorant to or blatantly corrupted by Communist China’s influence.

“From the White House to Capitol Hill, from the diplomatic corps to the national security establishment to the executive suites of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, American elites have sold the rope that will hang us to Beijing,” warns Peter Schweizer in his expose, “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win.” 

President Trump isn’t about to let that happen. He’s reversing course and showing that the United States will not back down. 

“Beijing may have overplayed its hand,” Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Wall Street Journal. “What China saw as leverage, Trump saw as betrayal, and that miscalculation could mark the beginning of the end of the tariff truce.”

As the kids would say, FAFO.