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Alarm over China’s stranglehold on critical minerals grew on Tuesday as global automakers joined their U.S. counterparts to complain that restrictions by China on exports of rare earth alloys, mixtures, and magnets could cause production delays and outages without a quick solution. German automakers became the latest to warn that China’s export restrictions threaten to shut down production and rattle their local economies, following a similar complaint from an Indian EV maker last week. China’s decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets has upended the supply chains central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies, and military contractors around the world. The move underscores China’s dominance of the critical mineral industry and is seen as leverage by China in its ongoing trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump has sought to redefine the trading relationship with the U.S.’s top economic rival China by imposing steep tariffs on billions of dollars of imported goods in hopes of narrowing a wide trade deficit and bringing back lost manufacturing. Trump imposed tariffs as high as 145% against China, only to scale them back after stock, bond, and currency markets revolted over the sweeping nature of the levies. China has responded with its own tariffs and is leveraging its dominance in key supply chains to persuade Trump to back down. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to talk this week, and the export ban is expected to be high on the agenda. Shipments of the magnets, essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles, have been halted at many Chinese ports while the Chinese government drafts a new regulatory system. Once in place, the new system could permanently prevent supplies from reaching certain companies, including American military contractors. The suspension has triggered anxiety in corporate boardrooms and nations’ capitalsfrom Tokyo to Washingtonas officials scrambled to identify limited alternative options amid fears that production of new automobiles and other items could grind to a halt by summer’s end. “If the situation is not changed quickly, production delays and even production outages can no longer be ruled out,” Hildegard Mueller, head of Germany’s auto lobby, told Reuters on Tuesday. Frank Fannon, a minerals industry consultant and former U.S. assistant secretary of state for energy resources during Trumps first term, said the global disruptions are not shocking to those paying attention. I dont think anyone should be surprised how this is playing out. We have a production challenge [in the U.S.], and we need to leverage our whole government approach to secure resources and ramp up domestic capability as soon as possible. The time horizon to do this was yesterday, Fannon said. Diplomats, automakers, and other executives from India, Japan, and Europe were urgently seeking meetings with Beijing officials to push for faster approval of rare earth magnet exports, sources told Reuters, as shortages threatened to halt global supply chains. A business delegation from Japan will visit Beijing in early June to meet the Ministry of Commerce over the curbs, and European diplomats from countries with big auto industries have also sought “emergency” meetings with Chinese officials in recent weeks, Reuters reported. India, where Bajaj Auto warned that any further delays in securing the supply of rare earth magnets from China could “seriously impact” electric vehicle production, is organizing a trip for auto executives in the next two to three weeks. In May, the head of the trade group representing General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, and other major automakers raised similar concerns in a letter to the Trump administration. “Without reliable access to these elements and magnets, automotive suppliers will be unable to produce critical automotive components, including automatic transmissions, throttle bodies, alternators, various motors, sensors, seat belts, speakers, lights, motors, power steering, and cameras,” the Alliance for Automotive Innovation wrote in the letter. By Jarrett Renshaw and Ernest Scheyder, Reuters
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E-Commerce
As artificial intelligence’s influence continues to spread deeper into pop culture, major record labels are starting negotiations with AI companies to ensure theyand their artistsare properly compensated when their music is used to train large language models. Sony, Warner Music, and Universal Music Group reportedly have begun talks with Suno and Udio, a pair of generative AI startups that allow users to compose new tracks. That could set the bar for how much artists and labels will be paid for their influence on AI-created musicand set up a tracking system that ensures they are accurately compensated for the frequency of use. The negotiations come as Suno and Udio are facing a lawsuit from the Recording Industry Association of America, which accuses the two companies of copyright infringement. The labels also filed suit against the AI companies last year, a case which is still pending. Suno, though, in its answer to the complaint, stopped just short of saying it had used copyrighted materials to train its models, saying its training data includes essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open Internet, abiding by paywalls, password protections, and the like, combined with similarly available text descriptions. Suno and Udio argued that their use of the material falls with fair use exemptions. What the major record labels really dont want is competition,” Suno wrote in its response to the suit from the labels. Where Suno sees musicians, teachers, and everyday people using a new tool to create original music, the labels see a threat to their market share. The record labels are pushing to develop fingerprinting technology that would determine how and when a song is used in the creation of AI music. They’re also looking to be included in the music products Suno and Udio release, with influence over the development and parameters of new products. Universal Music Group, which is home to Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and Drake, has a history of being particularly rigid during these sorts of negotiations. Last year, the company’s standoff with TikTok resulted in it pulling its songs from the short-form social media juggernaut, then demanding the app remove any music credited to a songwriter signed to UMG. There must not be free rides for massive global platforms that refuse to meaningfully address issues around AI, platform safety, or pay their fair share for our artists and songwriters work, CEO Lucian Grange said at the time. All of the labels are also demanding that artists have the option to opt out of select AI use cases. Several artists, last year, signed an open letter that was critical of AI, including Billie Eilish, Billy Porter, Jon Batiste, and Jon Bon Jovi. The letter called for controls on AI music that would infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists. Also included among the signatories were the estates of Frank Sinatra and Bob Marley, which have seen those artists revived through AI to cover songs from other artists. Music companies are the latest to negotiate with AI firms after initial resistance. Several book publishers and news organizations have agreed to deals, including News Corp., Politico/Business Insider publisher Axel Springer, Reuters, The New York Times and Vox Media. While the talks are still early (and are being done independently by each of the labels instead of as a collective group), should they be successful, they will likely end with the music labels taking an ownership stake in the startups (as they have in streaming services like Spotify). There will also likely be some sort of financial settlement to end the existing lawsuits.
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E-Commerce
For more than 30 years, meteorologist John Morales has broadcast weather forecasts to South Floridians, warning the hurricane-prone region about the storms headed toward its coast. But now, Moraless ability to give accurate, quality forecasts to those residents is being hampered because of the recent federal government cuts to science and climate research. The Trump administration has laid off thousands of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the agency responsible for the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center, among other resources. Already, National Weather Service offices across the country are short-staffed, and the department has curtailed its data collectionlike launching fewer weather balloons. With fewer staff and data, weather forecasts are becoming less accurate. This means residents wont have the weather information they need about approaching storms like hurricanes. Morales illustrated this point in a recent broadcast on NBC 6 South Florida by looking back at a forecast he did six years ago, concerning Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm that decimated the northwest Bahamas. In the clip, he acknowledged that viewers had anxiety because it looked as if the storm was heading straight toward South Florida. But Morales had assured them: Its going to turn [away from the coast]. The turn was never forecast to be on Sunday. … The turn will come Monday afternoon, Monday evening into Tuesday. Remember that? Morales said in the broadcast after the old clip played. He had been right and, thanks to proper data collection and forecasting, was able to ensure viewers were prepared. Confidently, I went on TV and told you its going to turn, you dont need to worry, he said. I’m here to tell you that Im not sure I can do that this year, because of the cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science in general. National Weather Service offices across South and Central Florida are already 20% to 40% understaffed, Morales noted. There’s also been a 20% reduction in weather balloon launches, which collect atmospheric data like wind speed, humidity, pressure, and so on. And what were starting to see, Morales continued, is that the quality of the forecast is becoming degraded. Because of federal government cuts, it’s likely hurricane hunter aircrafts wont be able to fly this year, he added. Hurricane hunters fly directly into the eye of storms in order to make forecasts even more accurate, thanks to real-time data. With less reconnaissance missions, Morales said, we may be flying blind. Thats especially dire considering this years hurricane season is expected to come with an above-average number of storms. Last year was an intense hurricane season too, with $5 billion events and a total of more than $124 billion in damage. (The Trump administration has since cut NOAAs ability to track the cost of climate change-related weather disasters, so its not clear if well know just how damaging this years hurricane season ends up being.) For Morales’s South Florida viewers, all these federal cuts mean they may not know how strong a hurricane is before it reaches the coastline, he added, leaving them unprepared in the face of what could be a disastrous storm season. Morales has been forecasting the weather in South Florida for 34 years, and this isnt the first time hes spoken out about a dire reality. In October 2024, as Hurricane Milton was barreling toward Floridas west coast, Morales got emotional describing the storms intensity. “This is just horrific,” he had said then, while also making it clear to his viewers that record-hot seas, fueled by climate change, were driving that escalation. Scientists and meteorologists have been trying to translate the costs of the Trump administration’s federal cuts to everyday Americans. Moraless broadcast does so bluntly. When sharing the clip to his Buesky account, Morales captioned it with the quip: Cuts have consequences, illustrated. And Morales ended the television segment with a call to action, as many scientists have been during the Trump administration. I just want you to know that what you need to do is call your representatives, he told viewers, and make sure that these cuts are stopped.
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