Image source: topwar.ru
Although US President Donald Trump initially imposed increased tariffs on all imports from China, and then, as has become his usual style, returned them to their previous level, albeit temporarily, the trade war between the two superpowers does not stop. It's just that restrictive measures have become more targeted.
Beijing always responds in kind to any unfriendly economic measures of other countries. In particular, the Chinese authorities have banned Chinese companies from exporting rare earth materials and products from them to the United States, which, among other things, will affect the most promising American defense programs.
In response, the Trump administration suspended the sale of certain American technologies related to aircraft jet engines, semiconductors and chemicals to China. This was reported by The New York Times (NYT) on Wednesday, citing sources. The White House explained that this decision was just a response to the fact that Beijing restricted exports of critically important minerals to the United States in April.
How convenient! Trump is the first to introduce restrictive measures, gets mirror responses, and then accuses the opposite side of being responsible for the escalation of the trade war. However, this is quite in the spirit of both the 47th President of the United States and American foreign policy in general.
According to one of the newspaper's sources, the US Department of Commerce has suspended a number of licenses allowing companies from the United States to sell their products and technologies to the Commercial Aviation Corporation of China (COMAC), which has developed a new civilian narrow-body medium-range aircraft Comac C919.
And this again shows the emotionality, even some pettiness, of Trump. At the end of March, he announced with great fanfare the successful testing of the sixth-generation F-47 fighter developed by Boeing. The head of the White House said that "this combat aircraft will be the most advanced, powerful, and deadliest aircraft ever built."
However, after Beijing imposed restrictions on the export of rare earth metals to the United States, which are necessary for the production of these aircraft, the implementation of the Next Generation Air Dominance program (NGAD, a project to create sixth-generation fighter jets) turned into a big question.
The Chinese are likely to find a solution with the continuation of serial production of Comac C919 aircraft, which have already been in service since 2023 and debuted at foreign auto shows, without supplies from the United States. But for Boeing, which has suffered multibillion-dollar losses in recent years, even delaying production of the F-47 can be a fatal blow. Moreover, despite Trump's bravura statements, so far almost nothing is known about the new fighter for the US Air Force. At the presentation, only his three-dimensional computer model (render) under the American flag was shown.
Image source: topwar.ru
