Trump Touts Rare-Earth Win in Talks Showing Xi’s Strong Hand (2)

Donald Trump sounded triumphant afterwards. But in his first meeting with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping since returning to office in January, the US president had to give at least as much as he got.

Trump declared the two leaders had “settled” their differences on one of the thorniest issues, and a major source of Beijing’s leverage: access to China’s rare earths. “There’s no roadblock at all on rare earth,” he said Thursday aboard Air Force One. “That will hopefully disappear from our vocabulary for a little while.”

What Trump chalked up as a win — for the global economy as ...