China’s devastating new move to cut off global access to rare-earth minerals could be cataclysmic — shutting down manufacturing of core sectors across the U.S. economy.

In this episode of Rethinking Trade, Lori Wallach speaks with Rush Doshi — former National Security Council Director for China and Taiwan and Director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations — about why the tentative one-year pause reported Sunday does not remove the underlying risk, but confirms how much leverage China has consolidated.

Rush explains the urgent actions needed immediately to limit U.S. vulnerabilities, and discusses with Lori how we got into this dire situation — with China’s current rare-earths near-monopoly creating a chokepoint over basic inputs that keep the modern economy running.