U.S. President Donald Trump attends a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung (not pictured) at the Oval Office, at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 25, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
President Donald Trump insisted that "nobody needed magnets" until a Chinese plot "convinced" the world to use them 20 years ago.
During a Monday Oval Office meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, Trump reflected on his relationship with China.
"They have to give us magnets, if they don't give us magnets, and then we have to charge them 200 percent tariff for something, you know," the president said. "You know, China intelligently went and they sort of took a monopoly of the world's magnets, and nobody needed magnets until they convinced everybody 20 years ago, let's all do magnets."
"There were many other ways that the world could have gone."
Trump promised that the U.S. would be "heavy into the world of magnets" within the following year.
"I sent them all of the parts so their planes can fly," the president said of China. "You know, we had 200 of their planes were unable to fly because we were not giving them Boeing parts purposely because they weren't giving us magnets."
"But the magnet situation, we have tremendous power over them, and they have some power over us with magnets," he added. "We're going to have a lot of magnets in a pretty short period of time."
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