Trump has previously signaled that China's slow pace of easing the critical mineral export ban represents a violation of the Geneva agreement. Shipments of the magnets, essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles, have been halted at many Chinese ports while the Chinese government drafts a new regulatory system. Once in place, the new system could permanently prevent supplies from reaching certain companies, including American military contractors. The suspension has triggered anxiety in corporate boardrooms and nations' capitals - from Tokyo to Washington - as officials scrambled to identify limited alternative options amid fears that production of new automobiles and other items could grind to a halt by summer's end. "If the situation is not changed quickly, production delays and even production outages can no longer be ruled out," Hildegard Mueller, head of Germany's auto lobby, told Reuters on Tuesday. Frank Fannon, a minerals industry consultant and former US assistant secretary of state for energy resources during Trump’s first term, said the global disruptions are not shocking to those paying attention. “I don’t think anyone should be surprised how this is playing out. We have a production challenge (in the US) and we need to leverage our whole of government approach to secure resources and ramp up domestic capability as soon as possible. The time horizon to do this was yesterday,” Fannon. Diplomats, automakers and other executives from India, Japan and Europe were urgently seeking meetings with Beijing officials to push for faster approval of rare earth magnet exports, sources told Reuters, as shortages threatened to halt global supply chains. A business delegation from Japan will visit Beijing in early June to meet the Ministry of Commerce over the curbs and European diplomats from countries with big auto industries have also sought "emergency" meetings with Chinese officials in recent weeks, Reuters reported.