China has stopped exporting minerals needed to make chips.

This is the biggest blow to the US since the start of the trade war.

China exported zero kilograms of the two minerals, which are key to making semiconductors, or chips, in August, a month after imposing restrictions on overseas sales over national security concerns.

China accounts for 80 percent of the world’s production of gallium and about 60 percent of germanium, and last month it did not sell any of these elements on the world market. In July, 5.15 tons of wrought gallium and 8.1 tons of wrought germanium were exported.

This clearly indicates that China will start mass-producing its own chips, which were recently developed by Huawei. In addition to its own needs, China will in this way cripple external competition and break into the market with its own chips.