china

America’s greatest enemy smells Trump's weakness: analysis

Atlantic editor-in-Chief Jeff Goldberg said President Donald Trump has just showed the world within the last few weeks that his administration is incapable of protecting vulnerable U.S. allies.

Goldberg said the tiny province of Taiwan has been under threat of takeover by the Chinese mainland throughout multiple presidential terms. But now, Goldberg tells Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller that no president has ever broadcast as much weakness on protecting Tiawan as Trump.

“The Chinese are watching a third-tier power, Iran — let’s say Russia’s a second-tier power and China is a near peer adversary of the United State — they’re watching a third-tier power screw with the United States in a narrow waterway. Now, what are the Chinese looking at 24 hours a day? A narrow waterway between Taiwan and China, and so are they getting the message that, oh, it turns out that America has a hard time mustering the will and capacity to secure and dominate a narrow body of water. ‘We happen to have a narrow body of water that's really important to us.’ And, you know, you don't want to come out of this Iran war with China thinking Donald Trump is never going to defend Taiwan if they launch an invasion across the strait of Taiwan.”

“We know generally that the intention on the Chinese long term is to seize Taiwan. So, like, we have now opened up a Pandora's box of challenges that were not there when we simply were monitoring the situation, as it were.

Goldberg is the editor who was accidentally included by Trump officials in a conversation about military strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. This allowed Goldberg to know about the attack “two hours” before U.S. bombs hit their targets.

The incident was so embarrassing that Golberg said White House advisor Susie Wiles ordered National Security Adviser Michael Waltz to give her his phone so she could hand it off to then DOGE team leader Elon Musk to see ow Goldberg’s number got on Waltz’ phone.

“Elon said ‘no’. You just added his phone number into the chat, because he has my phone number,” Goldberg told Miller.

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Trump’s 'strategic breakthrough' with China smells like 'collapse: analysis

“War Room” co-host Natalie Winters noticed national headlines were eager to tout China’s decision to reduce its painful embargo against U.S. soybean farmers as a kind of “win.” But this was no win.

"Soybeans are a solid proxy for how the United States deals with China: small, transactional, immediately legible 'wins' pitched as strategic breakthroughs. A shipment resumes, a statistic ticks up, a headline declares progress. Meanwhile, Beijing quietly continues accumulating long-term advantages," Winters writes in The American Conservative, adding that "Even after this supposed thaw, U.S. soybean exports to China remain down roughly 99 percent from historical levels. Despite all the hype, China is on track to register its lowest share of U.S. soybean exports since 2002."

When President Donald Trump resumed power last year he immediately re-ignited his tariff trade war with China, sparking yet another soybean exclusion against U.S. farmers. The farmers, who largely voted to elect Trump to both his first and second terms, were furious that their top international buyer of soybeans now gets most of its supply from elsewhere due to Trump's tariffs.

“This president sold America's farmers out," said farmer and rancher John Boyd, who is also the founder of the National Black Farmers Association.

Trump and Chinese leaders only recently hashed out a deal to loosen the Chinese lock-out of American soybeans, but Winters is astounded that administration officials and the press are flagging this as success.

“The soybean theory rests on a simple insight: America evaluates success through events, while China evaluates success through positioning. We ask whether something happened. They ask whether something became permanent,” said Winters. “China doesn’t need to win negotiations. It shapes the environment in which negotiations occur. That means controlling inputs, bottlenecks, and systems that persist regardless of who occupies office in Washington.”

In past negotiations China has pledged to purchase a certain percentage of U.S. goods and services, but in practice, China “never came close to meeting its commitment,” with independent tracking finding that Beijing fulfilled only about 58–60 percent of its promised purchases across 2020 and 2021.

“There were no meaningful penalties. The deal expired. The headlines moved on. China’s industrial assault on America continued,” said Winters, adding that, in any case, soybeans are merely a “symbolic gesture to absorb attention while larger, irreversible gains continue elsewhere.”

This includes China’s growing monopoly on rare earths, which Winters said accounts for “roughly 60 to 70 percent of global rare-earth mining and more than 85 to 90 percent of global processing and refining capacity, giving Beijing leverage at both the extraction and transformation stages.”

“While America negotiates deals and pushes unpopular cultural programs, China accumulates leverage. And through all of this, Washington keeps falling for the soybeans. Still,” said Winters. “Empires do not collapse because they fail to negotiate. They collapse because they lose the ability to distinguish between tactics and strategy, symbols and structure.”

“Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned,” Winters added. “America celebrates soybeans while the architecture of the world is quietly being rearranged.”

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Trump's revenge is enriching China at America's expense: economists

President Donald Trump's trade efforts have helped ignite new possible trade deals for China in the absence of the United States.

Trump issued another tariff threat on Europe that will begin February 1, however, it has caused some backlash. In a post to X, European Parliament member Bernd Lange, announced they have canceled the trade deal that had been made with the U.S. until further notice. Several hours later, Trump backed down from the European tariff, and claimed he had a deal on Greenland with NATO.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President George W. Bush's former chief economist on the Council of Economic Advisors, told CNN that the EU trade deal was a way for Trump to get out of his damaging tariffs while saving face.

He noted that the result of Trump's recent moves, many countries are now looking to China for trade deals over the United States.

"All of which is a reconfiguration of the global trading arrangements at the expense of the United States," he said.

"China is not a particularly attractive partner for many of these countries. Until we got into this episode over Greenland. And now compared to the United States, they're looking more attractive. And it's a it's a large market. It's never been one that Western economies have been able to exploit to their full desire. But they're going to talk and see if they can make some deal with China, because it's the next best partner," Holtz-Eakin said.

"Goodness gracious me. Which one of us woke up last night and thought to ourselves, crikey, my, life is incomplete without a Greenland," Australian-born economist Justin Wolfers said.

"So, look, rupturing our place in the world. Rupturing security alliances, rupturing American alliances both militarily and economically. For Greenland. Greenland. Wow. That was on no one's bingo card, was it?

Wolfers remarked that the once stable U.S. bond market doesn't look as "secure" to international investors as it once did.

"America's position in the world and the global financial system are very much under re-evaluation. And that I think here is the real threat," he said.

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Another country is lining up behind Israel to cause MAGA's next big 'divide'

Israel may not be President Donald Trump’s only international policy threatening MAGA unity, said Ransom Miller, reporting for the Hill.

“More Trump voters disapprove of the president’s handling of China than any other foreign policy issue,” said Ransom, according to a public opinion poll by his team at the Institute for Global Affairs. “Even as Trump makes overtures to Beijing, most of his voters continue to view China as a moderate or severe threat (83 percent), and almost a third agree that it intends to destroy the U.S. or replace the world order.

Trump is facing open revolt from his base regarding Chinese student visa after he reversed course from his earlier crackdown. The president announced the U.S. would grant 600,000 H-1B visas to Chinese students in the next two years, citing international students’ high fees and the value they add to the U.S. economy. He then doubled down on Wednesday, claiming that welcoming H-1B visa workers is “MAGA.”

But Miller said his message isn’t resonating with the MAGA base, with surveys revealing that more than half of Trump’s constituency feels that Chinese students shouldn’t be allowed to study in the U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, far-right activist Laura Loomer, Fox News host Laura Ingraham and longtime Trump advisor Steve Bannon also disagree, according to Miller.

Likewise, Trump’s approach to Chinese export controls are also causing argument with his high-tariff strategy damaging American growth, while Trump signals openness to exemptions on selling advanced U.S. technology to China, including semiconductors.

“For some, this is the worst of both worlds, as Americans are forced to pay higher costs for goods and Chinese military manufacturers gain greater access to American technology,” said Miller. “Trump’s former Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger predicts that allowing semiconductor sales to China would be ‘unilaterally deindustrializing America.’”

Miller added that Trump’s former National Security Council China director described the policy as “playing 2-D chess while Beijing is playing 4-D chess.”

But while Trump clings to China many of his MAGA voters want a clean break from the Chinese economy.

“White House Senior Counsel Peter Navarro continues to argue that U.S. industrial weakness has invited foreign aggression and that the U.S. must reshore manufacturing through high tariffs,” said Miller.

From their perspective, complete withdrawal remains the end goal. Steve Bannon went so far as to advise: “If you don’t do this, you’re always going to have the threat of the gun to your head.”

“The president may be able to tamp down on a potential insurgency as he dictates what is and isn’t America First. However, if the conversation among MAGA today is any indication, the worst for Trump be yet to come,” said Miller.

Read the Hill report at this link.

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'Everyone is holding their breath': WH officials fear Trump will make major concession to China

White House aides are growing increasingly anxious that President Donald Trump could make an unexpected concession to China on Taiwan during his upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to NBC News.

Several officials have urged Trump not to alter the long-standing U.S. stance on Taiwan’s independence. They worry that Trump, eager to secure a major trade deal with Beijing, might soften the U.S. position or adopt new language that tilts toward China.

China considers Taiwan a breakaway province that must eventually reunite with the mainland. Taiwan maintains its self-rule and rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims.

“Everyone is holding their breath,” one person familiar with the talks, who was not named, told the outlet.

According to the report, officials expect Xi to press Trump to publicly state that the United States “opposes” Taiwan’s independence — a shift from the current U.S. formulation that it “does not support” independence.

The report noted that such a statement, though subtle, would mark a sharp departure from decades of U.S. strategic ambiguity on the issue and would be viewed across Asia as a major diplomatic win for Beijing.

“President Trump has repeatedly affirmed that his Taiwan policy has not changed,” a White House official told the outlet. “President Trump leads on all foreign policy — he always puts forward deals that put the American people first.”

A senior State Department official echoed that message and was quoted in the report as saying, “The policy on Taiwan hasn’t changed one bit. It’s as consistent as it’s been for decades.”

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Trump has 'exposed' US in 'massive re-escalation' of tensions with major superpower: CNN

The United States and China have been in a tentative ceasefire in a trade war since this spring after President Donald Trump's initial wave of tariffs caused massive panic in financial markets. But that ceasefire may now be over.

On Friday, Trump posted to his Truth Social platform that he was rolling out new 100 percent tariffs on goods imported from China starting next month. He also pledged to impose new export controls on "critical software" made in the U.S. The president justified the new tariff by pointing to China's newly announced export controls on rare earths and rare earth magnets. Those materials are used widely by various industries like electric vehicle manufacturers, aircraft builders and for military radar, among other tech.

"It is impossible to believe that China would have taken such an action, but they have, and the rest is History," Trump wrote.

In a thread posted to his X account, CNN reporter Phil Mattingly wrote it was "really, really consequential" for Trump to announce the new tariffs in what amounted to a "48-hour implosion of the months-long US-China trade detente."

"Trump threatening massive re-escalation underscores just how sensitive/exposed the US/West are to China's hammer lock on rare earths," Mattingly wrote in a subsequent post. "But also reflects general Admin view that China's economy can't sustain losing access to US market. A rapid return to test of wills standoff."

Financial markets have responded sharply to the sudden increase in trade tensions between China and the United States. According to CBS News, Friday marked the stock market's worst day since April, with the S&P 500 seeing a 183-point decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 1.8 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite experienced a 3.6 percent decline. Mattingly wrote that while there's still time between now and November 1 for American and Chinese officials to work out a deal, there's still significant new tension between the two superpowers.

"Both sides have built-in timelines that create some room to ratchet things down and even still meet in a few weeks," he wrote. "But this has moved pretty quickly beyond leverage-seeking/brushback territory between the world's two largest economies/military powers."

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Not 'a single Trump voter in favor of this': MAGA explodes at latest reversal

Newsweek reports President Donald Trump’s supporters are raging against his plan to allow 600,000 Chinese students into the United States to study.

"I don't know a single Trump voter in favor of this," posted conservative attorney and commentator Marina Medvin on X.

Newsweek reports Trump proposed the plan as part of ongoing national trade talks with China, saying it was "very important" to allow Chinese students into the country.

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA.) was among the critics of the plan, saying the U.S. "should not let in" students who may be loyal to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

"If refusing to allow these Chinese students to attend our schools causes 15 percent of them to fail then these schools should fail anyways because they are being propped up by the CCP,” posted Greene on X. “Why are we allowing 600,000 students from China to replace our American student's opportunities? We should never allow that."

Newsweek reports Trump's announcement marks a reversal from his administration's hardline "America First" policies that his base embraces. A few months ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the U.S. would "aggressively" revoke visas for Chinese students and tighten visa screening. But Trump, reversed his own secretary when he said in June that he had "always been in favor" of allowing Chinese students into the U.S. to story.

Trump's 600,000 figure would be the most Chinese students ever admitted to the U.S., according to Newsweek. The number of Chinese students peaked at 372,000 in the 2019-20 academic year, during Trump’s first term, according to the Institute of International Education.

Members of the president's Make America Great Again movement, including Trump loyalist Laura Loomer are also slamming the plan, saying it runs counter to the administration's mass deportation efforts.

"If we are only mass deporting 1,000 illegals each day but allowing 600,000 Chinese spies to come to our country, how can we call them mass deportations? Do the math. We will never get rid of the millions who came in under Biden. It's basic math,” Loomer wrote.

Read the full Newsweek report at this link.

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'Lurching from crisis to crisis': How a 'fumbling' Trump can’t possibly put America first

Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tells the New York Times that President Donald Trump doesn’t really know how to ‘put America first,’ despite his constant bluster. So far, Trump has failed to stop the carnage in Ukraine and Gaza and find a diplomatic deal with Iran.

“He has delivered no peace, whether in Europe or in the Middle East,” says Wertheim. “His strike on Iran sums up his struggles: a frantic, fumbling attempt at negotiation cut short by a risky attack that sets the stage for further war.”

But “inartful dealings are only half the trouble,” adds Wertheim. “Year after year, the United States stations its military forces on geopolitical fault lines in Europe, Asia and the Middle East simultaneously. And year after year, it gets exactly what it has placed itself to receive, inheriting distant conflicts as its own and lurching from crisis to crisis at times of its many adversaries’ choosing.”

If Trump truly plans to reduce the country’s “exorbitant defense burdens, as he claims to want,” Wertheim said he must take the U.S. out of the position that guarantees high costs and “shift the burden of defending Europe onto increasingly capable European allies.”

“Since his secretary of defense announced in February that Europeans must ‘take ownership of conventional security on the continent,’ U.S. military assets there have essentially remained in place,” Wertheim points out. “If the United States is going to withdraw certain capabilities, Europeans need to know what they should replace; they cannot step up unless America steps down.”

But Trump “can’t seem to decide whether to remove some U.S. forces or simply get Europeans to spend more.”

However, Trump saved “his most characteristic shortcomings for Asia,” said Wertheim.

The U.S. traditionally dances a thin line between cooperating with China and competing with it, but Wertheim said Trump’s huge tariffs on everyone — not only China but also Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and others —damaged U.S. prospects for cooperation and competition alike for much of Asia. Within a span of months, Trump managed to reduce America’s own influence there, “while making Beijing look reliable by comparison.”

“At the bottom of the president’s foreign-policy vision is a curious void,” said Wertheim. “Mr. Trump is famously all about putting American interests first. Yet he has never figured out what he thinks America’s most basic interests are. He flits between caring little about geostrategic matters, especially compared with trade or immigration, and defaulting to the exorbitant aims of the status quo. He may not truly believe in the latter, but he won’t devise a replacement if he has no concept of what is essential for the United States to defend and what is not.”

Read the full New York Times report at this link.

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China sees Trump's new law as 'one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm': analyst

According to one analyst, only two groups are celebrating H.R. 1 — President Donald Trump's massive new budget law — on July 4: Republicans, and the Chinese Communist Party.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote Friday about how H.R. 1 will effectively "kneecap America’s renewable energy industry" and give China a monopoly on the renewable energy industry for decades. One of the major components of the law is the stripping of billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits for solar, battery and wind energy. This comes at the same time China is rapidly restructuring its energy grid to include larger portions of electricity from renewable sources. Friedman wrote that Chinese President Xi Jinping likely views July 4 as "American Electricity Dependence Day."

"The Chinese simply can’t believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable," Friedman wrote.

"They have passed a giant bill that, among other craziness, deliberately undermines America’s ability to generate electricity through renewables," he continued. "And why? Because they view those as 'liberal' energy sources, even though today they are the quickest and cheapest ways to boost our electricity grid to meet the explosion of demand from AI data centers."

The TImes columnist observed that even traditionally oil-rich places, governments are relying more on renewable energy. He pointed to Saudi Arabia — where AI centers are powered largely with solar energy — and Texas, where its local ERCOT energy grid added 10,000 megawatts of power just last year alone almost entirely from solar power with battery storage.

Friedman also cited a study from the research firm Energy Innovation, which found that Trump's law would "cause wholesale electric power prices to increase roughly 50% by 2035," while "cumulative annual consumer energy costs will increase more than $16 billion by 2030." The law would also reportedly eliminate 830,000 estimated renewable energy jobs by the end of the decade.

"[N]othing is more destined to make China great again than Trump’s 'big, beautiful, America surrenders the future of electricity to Beijing' bill," he wrote.

Click here to read Friedman's New York Times essay in its entirety (subscription required).

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'Serious questions': AZ GOP congressman asks AG Bondi to investigate 2024 election results

Newsweek reports U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz) has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation into alleged mishandling of ballots by Arizona-based Runbeck Election Services, which operates in several western states.

In his letter to Bondi, Hamadeh says there are “credible claims” that boxes of printed blank ballots from several states were improperly mixed with returned mail ballots that were in the process of being prepared for tabulation in Runbeck's warehouse.

“This alarming situation raises serious questions about the security and integrity of the election process in Maricopa County and potentially beyond,” Hamadeh stated. “The comingling of blank ballots with live ballots poses a significant risk to the accuracy and fairness of election results. It is crucial that we have confidence in the integrity of our elections, and any potential mishandling of ballots must be investigated to ensure that the will of the voters is accurately reflected.”

The congressman requested the DOJ investigate the circumstances surrounding the mixing of the ballots, security prevention measures in place and whether they were followed. He also requested information on the potential impact the mingling had on the accuracy of election results in Arizona's Maricopa County and elsewhere.

Hamadeh did not provide any details about the origin of the allegations, which Newsweek has not confirmed. However, in a press release, Hamadeh cited Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel recently announcing that his agency has turned over documents alleging China mass-produced fake U.S. driver's licenses as part of its effort to rig the 2020 election with fake mail-in ballots.

“We have known for years that our election processes in Arizona are flawed and ripe with opportunities for nefarious forces,” Hamadeh said. “… Now is the time for our Department of Justice to investigate credible allegations and offer sound recommendations to ensure that the integrity of our elections is restored in full.”

In February, Bondi disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force "to free resources to address more pressing priorities," despite warnings by U.S. intelligence agencies of malign foreign influence operations targeting the U.S. NBC News reports she also pared back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Northeastern University political science professor Costas Panagopoulos told Newsweek: "Irregularities in elections should always be investigated, but the sources of such inconsistencies, which can include error or miscalculation, are not always nefarious.”

“Mistakes can happen," said Panagopoulos.

Read the full Newsweek report at this link.

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'Like a king': China brutally mocks Trump in new opera

A new stage production recently debuted in China that skewers President Donald Trump and his relationships with various world leaders.

NBC News reported Sunday that the Cantonese opera "Trump, the Twins President," just concluded a three-day run in Hong Kong's Xiqu Centre, with each showing playing to a sold-out audience. While the opera parodies multiple world leaders, the star is Trump, who is played by actor Lung Koon-tin in a garish blond wig and oversized eyebrows.

Playwright Li Kui-ming initially wrote the show in 2019, during Trump's first administration, but the newest version is updated with multiple references to Trump's second term. This includes the U.S. president referring to Canada as "the 51st state," his administration's attacks on Harvard University and even his very recent public dispute with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

The opera begins with an actor portraying Trump's eldest daughter, Ivanka, having a dream in which her father has a twin brother in China named Chuan Pu (which roughly translates to "Trump" in Chinese). The show begins by chronicling the United States' initial foray with China in the 1970s, in which then-President Richard Nixon met with Chinese Premier Zhao Enlai — with a young Chuan Pu becoming disillusioned with China and moving to the U.S.

Notably, the opera also dramatizes Trump's 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Prior to the rally, the Ivanka character asked Chuan Pu to stand in for her father, who had been abducted by Martian aliens. Chuan Pu does not survive the assassination attempt, which sets off other events throughout the production. The show ends with Trump getting into a fist fight with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, with the two taking turns knocking each other down.

Li, who is a former journalist, told NBC he aimed to draw parallels between Trump and former Chinese leader Mao Zedong, as they both sought to shape the world around them "like a king." However, he insisted that Trump would "love my drama," and emphasized that the show's plot is "only a dream" and that it's not meant to be taken "very seriously."

"Trump, the Twins President" debuted as the United States prepares to enter into a new round of trade negotiations with Chinese officials in hopes of ending Trump's trade war with the Asian superpower. Trump's tariffs on the United States' top trade partner has effectively paralyzed commerce between the two nations, and the dearth of Chinese imports entering the U.S. may lead to stores having rows of empty shelves this summer.

Click here to read NBC's full report.

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