“You don’t have the cards,” Donald Trump famously remarked to Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier this year.

The US and Ukrainian presidents are getting on better these days. But Trump’s brutally realist approach to international relations remains. It is all a trial of strength. Who has the best cards?

The Trump administration now seems to have realised that in the game of trade poker with China, it is Beijing that has the ace up its sleeve. This month, the US extended the 90-day truce in its trade war with China for another three months. As a result, China currently has more favourable tariff rates with the US than Switzerland or India. Beijing’s ace is its near monopoly on the production of rare earths and other critical minerals that provide vital inputs to western industry and the US military.