This week, China banned exports of a number of essential minerals to the US, marking the newest transfer in an escalating sequence of tit-for-tat commerce restrictions between the world’s two largest economies.
In explicitly chopping off, fairly than merely limiting, supplies of strategic significance to the semiconductor, protection, and electrical car sectors, China has clearly crossed a brand new line within the long-simmering commerce warfare.
However on the similar time, it chosen minerals that gained’t cripple any industries—which leaves China loads of ammunition to inflict larger financial ache in response to any additional commerce restrictions that the incoming Trump administration could impose. Learn extra about what drove China’s choice, the way it impacts local weather tech and what’s prone to occur subsequent.Â
—James Temple
This story is a part of our MIT Expertise Evaluate Explains sequence. Let our writers untangle the advanced, messy world of know-how that will help you perceive what’s coming subsequent. You may learn extra from the sequence right here.
3 issues that didn’t make the ten Breakthrough Applied sciences of 2025 record
Subsequent month, MIT Expertise Evaluate will unveil the 2025 record of 10 Breakthrough Applied sciences. Yearly, our newsroom appears throughout the fields we cowl for applied sciences which are having a real breakthrough second. This annual package deal highlights the applied sciences that we expect matter most proper now.
Within the meantime, listed below are three applied sciences that we thought-about together with on the 2025 record however in the end determined to go away off. And though these nominees didn’t make the lower this yr, they’re nonetheless price maintaining a tally of. Learn the complete story.
