Rare earths, chips, sanctions, dollar: the week confirms the shift. The economy is no longer the background to power. She is the instrument.
Rare earths: a truce that lasts on words
The Sino-American summit in May 2026 did not commit to anything firm. Beijing will “respond to American concerns” about shortages of yttrium, scandium and indium. No calendar. No verification mechanism. No definition. The decline is clear in the face of the language of Busan, in October 2025, which mentioned the elimination of controls. The suspension of Chinese restrictions from October runs until November 2026. It is a pause, not a disarmament.
Dependence remains structural. China accounts for approximately 91% of global rare earth separation and refining, and 60% of magnet rare earth mining. The lock is not in the ground. He’s in the process.
Sources : Discovery Alert · IEA · Andersen Institute
The West blocks upstream mining
The response hinges on the ownership of assets. In May 2026, Canberra ordered Chinese investors to sell their shares in Northern Minerals: six shareholders ordered to sell within two weeks. The logic is new. Upstream participation becomes a national security issue, no longer a commercial matter.
Washington finances in the same direction. The American EXIM has issued nearly $4 billion in letters of intent on the rare earth chain; new magnet capacities will come into service in the summer of 2026. But industrial lead times remain long. The actual shift in Chinese production remains modest. Resilience is established quickly. It builds slowly.
Sources : Discovery Alert / Mining.com · CSIS
Chips: Washington monetizes Chinese access
Major shift in the semiconductor war. The Bureau of Industry and Security is now examining export licenses for Nvidia H200 and AMD MI325X to China on a case-by-case basis, after Donald Trump’s announcement of December 8, 2025. The price of passage: a 25% tax on these chips, paid to the American government.
The ceiling authorizes up to 900,000 H200 equivalents to China, on condition of remaining below half of American sales of the same model. The instrument is unprecedented: the geoeconomic weapon becomes a budgetary revenue line. Export controls no longer prohibit. He charges.
Sources : BIS · ArentFox Schiff · IAPS
Sanctions : l’offensive « Economic Fury » s’étend
OFAC and the State Department maintain pressure on Iran during negotiations on the ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. May 27, sanction of the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, used by the Revolutionary Guards to tax commercial traffic. On the Russian side, OFAC extended general license 131 linked to the sale of Lukoil International by around thirty days, until June 27, 2026.
The scale of the system can be seen in the figures. In the UK, frozen assets increased from £24.4 billion to £37 billion between 2023-24 and 2024-25. The sanction is no longer a signal. It is an administration.
Sources : Steptoe (June 1) · Mondaq
Dé-dollarisation: ambition displayed, gradualism rél
Under Indian presidency, the BRICS are moving forward through infrastructure rather than rupture. Official documents do not present de-dollarization as a sudden break, but as a part of financial resilience and institutional reform. Concrete lever: the New Development Bank aims to have 30% of its loans in local currencies by 2026.
The bloc’s contradictions persist. The dollar retains the liquidity and depth of its sovereign debt market; the yuan remains constrained by capital controls. The India-United States trade agreement of February 2026, followed a few weeks later by the resumption of purchases of Russian oil outside the dollar, says everything about internal tensions. We do not exit the dollar by decree. We circumvent it, at the margins.
Sources : BRICS Council · Wiley / Global Policy · Techies
Bypass, blind spot of the system
Demonstration that the weapon of sanctions remains porous. Pyongyang would have exported around 1.5 million tonnes of coal in 2025, in violation of UN sanctions. According to South Korean services, imports of refined oil from China and Russia have exceeded the ceiling of 500,000 barrels set by the UN seven times.
The method is known: coal and ores sold via ships under false identities, often disguised as Russian cargo. Geoeconomics has its trenches. It also has its passages.
Sources : Steptoe (June 8)
