As Sino-US negotiations resume, the White House in the United States has sent out a rather threatening signal.
According to Bloomberg, the White House warned China that if it does not withdraw its export control measures on rare earth resources, the United States will consider implementing a series of sanctions against China similar to those imposed on Russia after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict.
The core content of these sanctions can be summarized into three aspects:
1. Freeze assets within the jurisdiction of the United States of the sanctioned entities or individuals;
2. Prohibit U.S. individuals and companies from conducting any transactions with the sanctioned entities, which means American companies leaving China;
3. Expel from the SWIFT system, meaning no longer able to use dollar transactions.
The sanction direction disclosed by the U.S. essentially means expelling China from the dollar settlement system, freezing Chinese assets in the U.S., and blocking business exchanges between the two countries, which is a "comprehensive decoupling" ultimate threat.
However, if you analyze carefully, this is just an empty bluff by the United States. First of all, the United States has repeatedly threatened to freeze Chinese assets in the U.S., which sounds very fierce, like wanting to overturn the table, but when you really look at the data, you know how weak this threat is.
Let's do a clear account: The U.S. has long been suppressing and sanctioning China, and has already blocked most of China's investments in the U.S. Our small amount of assets in the U.S. is negligible. Public data shows that the total U.S. overseas assets are 27.14 trillion U.S. dollars, of which 2.25 trillion U.S. dollars are invested in China, accounting for 8.29%; even compared to the U.S. national total assets of 3.86 quadrillion U.S. dollars, it accounts for 0.58%. In contrast, China's total investment in the U.S. is only 70 billion U.S. dollars, and the U.S. Treasury bills held by China reached 730.7 billion U.S. dollars by October 2025, reaching a low since 2009 - this scale comparison is like a small witch meeting a big witch.
Therefore, if the U.S. really intends to act seriously, it must first weigh its own financial situation. Once the U.S. initiates asset freezes, China's countermeasures will first target American enterprises and capital in China. This is not an empty statement. Take those American giants that have deeply invested in the Chinese market, they have poured real money: BlackRock's asset management scale in China exceeds 20 billion U.S. dollars, and Tesla's two super factories have invested over 10 billion U.S. dollars, and the capital sunk by these two alone is close to 200 billion RMB. Not to mention a bunch of American companies that rely on the Chinese market, their assets are already tightly bound to the Chinese market, and once it's serious, no one can escape.
So, if they really go all out with asset freezes, who would feel the pain? The answer is obvious.
The U.S. once used this move against Russia, but Russia hit the U.S. hard. The EU and the U.S. froze Russian overseas debts, right? Then I used these overseas assets to pay my own U.S. debt, and when the freeze ended, you could come and collect the money. It's a very magical operation that left everyone speechless. Russia used U.S. dollars to repay its U.S. debt, fully fulfilling the contract, without any problem, and through the SWIFT system issued payment instructions to the bank that holds its U.S. assets.
As for the U.S. companies exiting China, the Chinese manufacturing industry has deeply integrated into the global production network. From consumer electronics to new energy equipment, from pharmaceutical raw materials to industrial components, U.S. companies not only rely on China's production capacity but also regard China as a crucial sales market. Completely cutting off trade relations would mean that U.S. consumers would face a surge in daily consumer goods prices, and more importantly, could lead to the stagnation of U.S. domestic manufacturing due to the interruption of intermediate products. Multinational giants such as Apple, Intel, and General Motors have global business layouts that are closely related to Chinese manufacturing; forcibly separating them would trigger a crisis in their production systems.
Then there's the idea of kicking China out of the dollar settlement system. China is no longer just the label of "the world factory," but rather the "core of the dual engine" of the global real economy - one side is the manufacturing value added and manufacturing output accounting for nearly 30% and 31.6% of the global total, and the power generation volume has a crushing share of 32.3%, more than the combined total of the second to fifth places; the other side is the "super buyer" of the global commodities market, just for iron ore imports, it consumes 79.7% of the global amount, crude oil imports account for 17.66%, and natural gas imports have consistently ranked among the top three globally. This means the most important "industrial production - resource input - commodity output" cycle, China is both the starting point and the endpoint, an indispensable core hub.
Now comes the key question: If the U.S. wants to "kick out" from this hub and force itself to exit the settlement link, the consequences are far from being simply China passively seeking alternatives - it's about breaking the global real economy's bowl. You should know that the foundation of the U.S. dollar hegemony has never been the printing press, but the three pillars of "oil-dollar" linkage, global trade settlement dominance, and reserve currency status, among which trade settlement is the thickest. However, what the U.S. has done in recent years is self-destruction: kicking Russia out of SWIFT, freezing foreign assets, using dollar sanctions as a political tool; debt skyrocketing to 38.2 trillion U.S. dollars, interest expenses exceeding 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars annually, surpassing defense spending, falling into a "high debt-high interest-high interest" death spiral. In this case, actively cutting off the settlement connection with China's real economy is essentially giving up the core application scenarios of the dollar.
In short, truly delinking from the dollar system? That's not a crisis, but a "accelerator" for the RMB. The core logic is simple: the resource country has no choice, this is not a "choice question" but a "survival question". Brazil's soybean exports have 12% settled in RMB, doubling from two years ago, because China bought more than 60% of its soybeans; the UAE's oil exports to China have RMB settlement reaching 18%, knowing that China is the largest oil importer in the world, losing the Chinese order means losing half of the supply chain. Australia doesn't need to be mentioned, 70% of its iron ore is sold to China, if you insist on sticking to the dollar, think about the consequences of your mine stopping operations first.
India lost 8 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of the year due to U.S. dollar fluctuations, this lesson is seen by everyone - accepting the RMB can not only maintain stable orders but also avoid exchange rate risks, and the RMB in hand can directly buy Chinese new energy vehicles and high-speed rail equipment, forming a trade loop, a fool would choose the former.
In short, the U.S. is just trying to increase its leverage through empty bluffs, and the purpose is simple, to get China to lift the restrictions on rare earths, because now the U.S. high-tech industry is really facing a shutdown crisis, TSMC's U.S. factory has already issued warnings, without rare earths, the factory will have to shut down. Then it wants China to import soybeans, this year U.S. soybeans have increased production, if China does not absorb U.S. soybeans, it will affect Trump's midterm elections, because farmers are Trump's solid vote base.
But now it's the U.S. that is being choked by China, if the U.S. wants China to be more lenient, then it should speak less harsh words.
Original text: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7564810472168358406/
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