China’s dominance of the rare earths supply chain has emerged as a potent tool in its renewed trade war with the United States. The minerals are used to power everything from iPhones to fighter jets.

China is facing a double whammy: corrosive deflation and tariffs that threaten to block trade. Chinese workers will be the biggest casualties.

The Trump administration’s tariff war with China is most often seen through the lens of the economy. But to many economists, the bigger threat is that Trump’s global trade gambit will erode the United States’ main source of global authority: the long-term geopolitical relationships it has cultivated over nearly a century.