‘Imagine a U.S. economy with zero manufacturing,’ warns former Trump official Nazak Nikakhtar, after China announced export control on industrial diamonds.
WASHINGTON—A former Department of Commerce official recently stressed the urgency of the threat of U.S. supply chain dependence on communist China.
“We are running out of time. We really need to race to solve this,” Nazak Nikakhtar, former assistant secretary for Industry and Analysis during the first Trump administration, recently told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders,” adding that the problem had been neglected for “at least two decades.”
According to Nikakhtar, the issue stems from the deliberate strategic actions of the Chinese communist regime. She said that for many years, Beijing has engaged in unfair trade practices—often paying subsidiaries to flood the global market with cheap made-in-China products that others can’t compete with, thereby gaining control of an industry’s supply chain and moving on to undercut the next one.
Compared with China’s dominance in the production of steel, batteries, solar cells, and personal protective equipment—all of which the American public is aware of because of the tariffs imposed during the Trump and Biden administrations—China’s dominance in lab-grown industrial diamond production is equally critical yet lesser known.
These diamonds are essential for cutting tools—crucial for building, drilling, and manufacturing. The affected industries range from cars to aerospace and defense. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), China produces 95 percent of the world’s synthetic diamonds, and U.S. dependence on imports has fluctuated between 80 and 95 percent since 2018.
On Dec. 3, China’s ruling communist party banned the export of industrial diamonds to the United States, along with gallium, germanium, and antimony—materials critical for making semiconductors. The decision was announced a day after the United States added advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment and software to its export controls to curb Beijing’s access to these critical elements for developing artificial intelligence.
Diamonds for Industrial Power
Also referred to as “super hard materials,” industrial diamonds are part of “Made in China 2025,” the Chinese communist regime’s 10-year industrial policy aimed at achieving dominance in advanced manufacturing worldwide.
By Terri Wu and Jan Jekielek
