Seeking Alpha’s roundup of statements, announcements, and remarks that could impact markets, sectors, or individual stocks.
- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the administration will set price floors for a number of sectors to prevent China from manipulating markets such as rare earths.
“When you are facing a nonmarket economy like China, then you have to exercise industrial policy,” Bessent said in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.
“So we’re going to set price floors and the forward buying to make sure that this doesn’t happen again and we’re going to do it across a range of industries,” Bessent added.
- Bessent also said that the U.S. needs to establish a strategic reserve for minerals such as rare earths, which are used in a wide array of technological devices ranging from cruise missiles to EVs to medical imaging machines.
China, a major global supplier of rare earths, announced export restrictions last week. Bessent said that JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) has expressed interest in helping the U.S. government establish its own reserve.
CNBC asked Bessent in its interview Wednesday if the government would take additional equity stakes in rare earth companies with domestic operations. The government has already taken sizeable stakes in MP Materials (MP), Trilogy Metals (TMQ), and Lithium Americas (LAC).
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Bessent said. “When we get an announcement like this week with China on the rare earths, you realize we have to be self-sufficient, or we have to be sufficient with our allies.”
Bessent added, however, that the government wouldn’t take stakes in non-strategic companies.
“We do have to be very careful not to overreach,” he said.
- President Trump said his administration was considering ending imports of Chinese cooking oil and possibly other products in retaliation for China’s de facto boycott on buying U.S. soybeans, which has been hurting American farmers.
“I believe that China purposefully not buying our Soybeans, and causing difficulty for our Soybean Farmers, is an Economically Hostile Act. We are considering terminating business with China having to do with Cooking Oil, and other elements of Trade, as retribution. As an example, we can easily produce Cooking Oil ourselves, we don’t need to purchase it from China,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.