China’s rare-earths power move jolted U.S. but was years in the making

China is wielding its most potent tool of economic coercion — its overwhelming dominance of the rare earths needed to make everything from laptops to jet engines — in an attempt to extract trade concessions from President Donald Trump and ensure the world remains dependent on China for critical raw materials.

Beijing’s dramatic expansion of export restrictions on rare earths Thursday — two weeks before Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are expected to meet — took the White House by surprise. It came, Trump said, “out of the blue.”

But the move was the culmination of a multiyear effort by China to boost its bargaining power by replicating U.S. restrictions on computer chips and other cutting-edge technologies — measures that Beijing sees as constraining its technological advancement and