Oct. 10 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump is threatening to impose punitive tariffs and cancel a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping due to new Chinese restrictions on rare earth minerals exports.
Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet in two weeks in South Korea during an international economic conference, but the U.S. president on Friday said he no longer has a reason to do so.
"Some very strange things are happening in China!" the president said Friday in a post on Truth Social.
"They are becoming very hostile and sending letters to countries throughout the world that they want to impose export controls on each and every element of production having to do with rare earths," Trump said.
The export restrictions would "clog' the markets and make life difficult for virtually every country in the world -- especially for China," he added.
