However by throwing the October 9 RE nuke, now whole West is going to speedrun the RE supply chain development
With Chinese tech restrictions in place, the west can at best build up their refining capabilities at a snail’s pace. Just look at how long it’s taking them to build their glorified boarder fence. It will take them years to get any new refining capacity operational at best, and decades to approach the scale and purity China has today. There is no imminent threat of the RE card loosing its bite anytime soon.
This was going to be inevitable ofc, but why awake them to this danger without actual huge benefit?
Only thing I can think of is that a background deal was made that US is going to silently relax NVIDIA controls and/or relax ASML sanctions so that tmr in the negotiations with EU, China will demand them to drop ASML export controls in return for pausing RE export control for 1 year
That would be a big brain Go move tbh where it would allow US to save face and EU to be thrown under the bus lol
You are vastly overestimating the importance of Nvidia chips.
There are two main reasons for China agreeing to this pause.
First, China’s own domestic chip production is right at the cusp of reach breakthrough in mass rollout. This extension eliminates the possible supply gap until that happens. One year is meaningless for the west in the RE race, but it’s a watershed moment for China in terms of chips.
Secondly, China wants to slow boil the American crab, so it’s dead before it even knows it. This deal is just China dialling the heat down a notch when the American crab is showing signs of agitation. It’s easier to boil it slowly when it’s calm and still as opposed it realising what you are doing and threshing about in the pan splashing boiling water all over the place. China doesn’t want to choke America so hard that it sees directly military action as the only play left.
