Somebody’s mad about being snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Donald Trump on Friday lost his cool with Xi Jinping amid China’s renewed efforts to throttle exports of rare earths.

Earlier this year, Beijing leveraged its chokehold on the global supply of critical minerals to call The White House’s bluff when Trump briefly dialed bilateral tariffs into the triple-digits.

The administration never admitted as much, but China won that battle. And it wasn’t just the rare earths trump card. Beijing responded immediately and in kind to Trump’s escalations, and appeared mostly unconcerned with the potential economic fallout for a domestic economy that was struggling enough already without a punishing trade war.

China’s tenacity surprised Trump, who ultimately backed down, taking an off-ramp Xi’s diplomats provided during May negotiations with Scott Bessent in Geneva.

Fast forward five months and China was back to restricting the flow of metals, magnets and minerals, citing national security concerns. MofCom’s October 9 memo included a bevy of new guidelines which, on a quick read, are designed to curb anything and everything to do with exporting the materials.

The new rules were so obviously an attempt to maximize leverage ahead of a possible Trump-Xi meeting at next month’s APEC Summit in South Korea that I personally didn’t see much use in mentioning them. This is just gamesmanship. And transparently so.

China learned a lot from Trump’s fold earlier this year, and the biggest lesson was probably that he chafes and, in fairly short order, panics, at the prospect of rare earth curbs. So, Beijing announced new measures, and this time they’re blanket curbs covering more items and closing off a few loopholes.

The restrictions are part of a broader push by Beijing to secure maximum leverage ahead of high-level discussions. In another manifestation of the same dynamic, USDA data suggested China held back on buying US soybeans early last month in the weeks leading up to a Trump-Xi phone call during which two septuagenarians decided the fate of TikTok, a social media platform which caters to young teenagers.

Speaking of young teenagers:

Some very strange things are happening in China! They are becoming very hostile, and sending letters to Countries throughout the World, that they want to impose Export Controls on each and every element of production having to do with Rare Earths, and virtually anything else they can think of, even if it’s not manufactured in China. Nobody has ever seen anything like this but, essentially, it would “clog” the Markets, and make life difficult for virtually every Country in the World, especially for China. We have been contacted by other Countries who are extremely angry at this great Trade hostility, which came out of nowhere. Our relationship with China over the past six months has been a very good one, thereby making this move on Trade an even more surprising one. I have always felt that they’ve been lying in wait, and now, as usual, I have been proven right! There is no way that China should be allowed to hold the World “captive,” but that seems to have been their plan for quite some time, starting with the “Magnets” and, other Elements that they have quietly amassed into somewhat of a Monopoly position, a rather sinister and hostile move, to say the least. But the U.S. has Monopoly positions also, much stronger and more far reaching than China’s. I have just not chosen to use them, there was never a reason for me to do so — UNTIL NOW!

That’s obviously Trump, speaking (shouting) on TruthSocial about China’s new rare earth curbs which he views as a duplicitous conspiracy. Recall that China agreed to lift most such restrictions during a second round of bilateral trade talks in June, prompting Trump to shriek deliriously about “FULL MAGNETS“.

It’s never easy to get a read on how angry Trump actually is. His liberal use of all-caps, misplaced scare quotes, inexplicable penchant for making proper nouns of regular words and generalized inability to communicate like an adult, let alone like an adult who holds high office, means everything reads like a furious screed.

Given that, I wouldn’t sell everything in your portfolio and plow the proceeds into $4,000 gold just yet. But I would note that what Trump said subsequently seemed to suggest he feels genuinely aggrieved. There’s really no use trying to paraphrase him, so here it is verbatim:

The letter they sent is many pages long, and details, with great specificity, each and every Element that they want to withhold from other Nations. Things that were routine are no longer routine at all. I have not spoken to President Xi because there was no reason to do so. This was a real surprise, not only to me, but to all the Leaders of the Free World. I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so. The Chinese letters were especially inappropriate in that this was the Day that, after three thousand years of bedlam and fighting, there is PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. I wonder if that timing was coincidental? Dependent on what China says about the hostile “order” that they have just put out, I will be forced, as President of the United States of America, to financially counter their move. For every Element that they have been able to monopolize, we have two. I never thought it would come to this but perhaps, as with all things, the time has come. Ultimately, though potentially painful, it will be a very good thing, in the end, for the U.S.A. One of the Policies that we are calculating at this moment is a massive increase of Tariffs on Chinese products coming into the United States of America. There are many other countermeasures that are, likewise, under serious consideration. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

If you aren’t laughing, you need your pulse checked. Because a lot of that’s riotous, not so much in substance, but stylistically.

I don’t think I’m ever going to get over Trump’s habit of signing his own social media messages, nor can I hold back the chuckles at his affinity for the phrase, “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

It’s also amusing that Trump couldn’t resist the temptation to allude, obliquely, to what The White House on Friday described as a “political” snub on the part of the Nobel Committee, which awarded the peace prize Trump covets to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.

Trump’s long been convinced that he deserves the award, and he doubtlessly hoped his role in “mediating” the ceasefire in Gaza (where “mediating” means he threatened to let the Israelis murder everyone north of the Netzarim Corridor if Hamas didn’t agree to his terms) might push him over the top. Alas.

The contention that the Gaza deal represents the onset of a durable peace in the Mideast after “three thousand years of bedlam” is the most ridiculous thing Trump said this week, and that’s a very high bar. (Of course, it’s only Friday. I suppose we should wait until Sunday at 11:59 PM before making any such declarations.)

Anyway, markets were upset headed into the weekend at the prospect of renewed tensions between the world’s two largest economies. I’m not sure I’d get too bent out of shape, though. This was just Trump letting off some steam.

More concerning, in my view anyway, was the onset of threatened federal government employee layoffs by Russ Vought.