U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent told Fox Business at Davos that China has met its commitments to buy American soybeans and to supply strategic rare earths, calling deliveries "largely on track" and expressing satisfaction with compliance.
Bessent said he had met Chinese counterparts the previous night and that Beijing had completed its annual soybean purchases this week, with the new year expected to bring roughly 25 million tonnes of U.S. soybeans. He added that rare-earth shipments were flowing "as expected," citing a fulfillment rate above 90 percent, and credited the threat of tariffs — invoked through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, in his telling — with bringing China to the negotiating table and delaying tighter export curbs by about a year.
Asked about reported Chinese restrictions on exports to Japan after recent diplomatic friction, Bessent adopted a detached posture: he said Japan’s spat with China had not spilled over to U.S. supply lines. Beijing, for its part, has defended any rare-earth export curbs on the grounds that such materials are dual-use and that export controls are a legitimate tool in international trade policy.
The commerce of rare earths matters far beyond bilateral politics. These elements are essential inputs for electric vehicles, wind turbines, consumer electronics and a range of military systems, and China remains the dominant supplier in global processing and refining. Any disruption in that chain has implications for Western manufacturers and defence planners who have been pressing for supply‑chain diversification for years.
The soybean story is equally political. While Washington touts large purchase commitments, many U.S. farmers and grain traders remain skeptical: Chinese buyers have sharply increased purchases from Brazil and Argentina, and some American exporters say promised shipments have yet to materialize. Bloomberg and others report that China purchased substantial volumes in 2025 but that commercial buyers have remained cautious, leaving U.S. sellers uneasy even as officials celebrate headline figures.
Taken together, the public exchanges at Davos underscore a partial thaw in Sino‑U.S. trade tensions that is driven as much by pragmatic buying and political considerations as by a durable reset in strategic rivalry. Beijing’s willingness to route supplies to U.S. buyers relieves immediate market pressure, but the underlying leverage inherent in China’s rare‑earth dominance — and the mixed signals from procurement patterns — mean vulnerability persists.
For markets and policymakers the immediate takeaway is clear: headline delivery numbers reduce the risk of abrupt shortages, but they do not eliminate the strategic dilemmas. Washington and its allies face a choice between short-term accommodation to secure flows and longer-term investments in alternative suppliers, processing capacity and recycling to diminish Beijing’s outsized leverage in a technology‑intensive era.