Politics

A Devastating Trade Spat With China Shows Few Signs of Abating

Published

11 months ago

April 13, 2025

A Devastating Trade Spat With China Shows Few Signs of Abating

President Trump’s rapidly escalating trade war with China has resulted in eye-watering tariffs on products exchanged between the countries and scrambled prospects for many global businesses that depend on the trade. And there is no end in sight.

The Trump administration has been waiting for the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to call Mr. Trump personally, but Beijing appears wary of putting Mr. Xi in an unpredictable and potentially embarrassing situation with the U.S. president.

With the two governments at an impasse, businesses that rely on sourcing products from China — varying from hardware stores to toymakers — have been thrown into turmoil. The triple-digit tariff rates have forced many to halt shipments entirely.

Trump officials have argued that the status quo with China on trade is not sustainable. Mr. Trump has rapidly ratcheted up tariffs on Chinese products, from 54 percent on April 2 to 145 percent just one week later. The Chinese government has argued that the actions are unfair and closely matched his moves, raising its tariffs on American goods to 125 percent on Friday.

But on Friday night, the administration created a significant carve out to its tariffs on China when it exempted some electronics, including smartphones, laptops and televisions. Those products will still be subject to other tariffs that Mr. Trump has put in place, like a 20 percent fee he added to Chinese goods in response to the country’s role in the fentanyl trade.

Mr. Trump has said he would like to speak with Mr. Xi, but he has stopped short of requesting a phone call, believing that it is the Chinese government’s turn to ask for such a call, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump officials say that dozens of countries have reached out to the administration about negotiations since the levies were imposed. China did not, and instead responded with harsh words and tariffs of its own.

Across the Trump administration, some officials are concerned that the trade war could soon escalate into a national security crisis, potentially causing the Chinese to move up plans for a military invasion of Taiwan.

The Pentagon is assessing the impact of China potentially cutting off rare earth exports to the United States and possibly blocking certain critical components used in U.S. weapons systems, according to a person with knowledge of the preparations. The aim is to fully ascertain what harm the Chinese could inflict on America’s ability to produce and maintain certain weapons and ammunition.

Mr. Trump continues to express optimism, saying that he has always gotten along with Mr. Xi and that “something positive” will come out of the relationship. But analysts have suggested that the situation may already have spiraled out of control.

Julian Evans-Pritchard, the head of China economics for the research firm Capital Economics, said the fact that the Chinese authorities had repeatedly matched U.S. tariff hikes suggested that they were in no rush to negotiate.

“A partial rollback of tariffs still seems likely at some point,” he said. “But it is hard to envisage a meaningful reset in the U.S.-China relationship.”

At a briefing on Friday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, declined to say whether the countries were in communication.

“I’m not going to comment on communications that are happening, or may not be happening, or either way, we’ll leave it to our national security team to get these discussions underway,” she said. She said the president was optimistic, and that he had “made it very clear he’s open to a deal with China.”

Speaking last week at the White House, Mr. Trump said that “China wants to make a deal. They just don’t know how quite to go about it.” He added that the Chinese were “proud people.”

Mr. Trump’s moves have taken tariffs to a level far past what would be prohibitive for trade, creating crises for many American businesses that depend on imports from China.

Rick Woldenberg, who runs Learning Resources, an Illinois-based maker of educational toys, said the latest tariffs had already forced him to pause some shipments from China. He called the rates that Mr. Trump had imposed “a joke” and said that even concessions from his suppliers could not make a dent in the fees he would owe to the U.S. government.

Learning Resources contracts with factories in Taiwan, India, Vietnam and other countries to make its products, but China is by far its biggest supplier, as it is for most toymakers. China accounted for two-thirds of all imports of toys and sporting goods to the United States last year.

Learning Resources employs about 500 people, most of them in the United States. It had planned to hire more this year to keep up with its fast-growing business, but has now abandoned some of those plans.

“We’re being asphyxiated by our very own government,” Mr. Woldenberg said.

Mr. Woldenberg said he paid about $2.3 million in tariffs and duties in 2024. This year, he would end up paying more than $100 million if sales somehow kept up with his projections from before the trade war. That’s more than he could pay if he cut every expense in the company other than base payroll.

At this point, Mr. Woldenberg said, the number hardly matters — beyond a certain level, the tariff is simply no longer something anyone in his business can afford to pay.

“He could raise it to 100 billion percent — it doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s like a legal ban.”

Christophe Lavigne, the president of Highfield, which manufactures boats in China and the United States, said he expected to be subject to 198 percent tariffs on some of his imports, and that he has decided to simply stop his shipments for now.

He said his entire company, and the jobs of his employees and his dealers, was on the line. The pace of change was too fast and unpredictable, he added.

“We cannot adjust our production lines quickly enough,” he said. “Converting our entire supply chain in just two months is not feasible.”

Major multinational corporations have been in a better position to source products from countries besides China, but they too are reeling. Hobby Lobby, the crafting retailer, told vendors on Thursday that it was delaying shipments from China as a result of the escalating trade war, according to correspondence viewed by The New York Times.

The retailer told vendors that the back-and-forth tariffs had resulted in “a rapidly shifting and unpredictable landscape” and that it hoped diplomacy between the United States and China would “yield a more stable and balanced outcome.”

The implications of disrupting business with one of the country’s biggest trading partners have ricocheted through the economy. The dollar fell to a three-year low on Friday, while Treasury yields continued to swing. A measure of consumer sentiment also tumbled, indicating that Americans were becoming nervous about how higher tariffs might affect them.

Mr. Trump abruptly announced on Wednesday a 90-day pause on the “reciprocal” tariffs that he had unveiled the previous week on countries around the world, and which had gone into effect just hours earlier. But the threat of those tariffs, and of retaliation against U.S. exports, continues to hang over the global economy.

It remains to be seen if the United States and China might try to reach some agreement soon. People familiar with the conversations said that members of the White House National Security Council were in touch with counterparts at the Chinese Embassy, and that Cui Tiankai, the former Chinese ambassador, had held meetings in Washington and New York over the past several weeks to discuss the relationship. But there has been little sign of communication between higher-ranking officials in the Trump administration and the Chinese government.

Early in Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Xi flew to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to meet with Mr. Trump for hours, sharing what Mr. Trump later referred to as “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you’ve ever seen.” But that did not stop the countries from entering into a bruising trade war. And in his second term, Mr. Trump has been even more emboldened and unpredictable.

Mr. Trump has given few indications publicly of what he wants the Chinese to do. But Trump officials say the issues are well known. In an annual report released March 31, the Office of the United States Trade Representative detailed the trade barriers that U.S. businesses face when selling abroad, dedicating almost 50 of its nearly 400 pages to China.

In recent weeks, in addition to countering Mr. Trump’s tariff threats, China has added some U.S. companies to an unreliable entity list that essentially bars them from doing business in the country. It has also imposed licensing systems to restrict exports of rare earth elements, which are essential for electric cars and other products.

On Friday, as it announced its latest increase in tariffs on American products, the Chinese government said it would not raise the rate further because it was already so high that the number no longer made any difference.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said that the United States had used tariffs “for bullying and coercion” and had ultimately become “a laughingstock.”

“If the U.S. continues its tariff numbers game, China will ignore it,” it said.

China also ratcheted up pressure on U.S. companies as it issued new regulations on Friday that will subject semiconductors made by U.S. firms overseas to higher tariffs.

The move will put pressure on companies like Intel, Global Foundries and others that have U.S. chip factories. It may also encourage chip companies to shift manufacturing out of the United States to maintain access to the Chinese market, where the bulk of global electronics are made.

Paul Triolo, a partner at the business strategy firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, said that electric vehicle companies and others were trying to find alternate supplies of rare earth minerals and magnets after the Chinese restrictions last week.

Some companies will have to stop production after 30 or 60 days, depending on stockpiles and how fast they consume those materials, he said. “It is like a game of musical chairs,” he said. “We are talking to clients scrambling to find alternatives, and there are few.”

Shawn McCreesh, Maggie Haberman, Karen Weise, Tony Romm and Jonathan Swan contributed reporting.

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Politics

Trump justifies Iran attack as Congress and others raise objections

Published

10 minutes ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Trump justifies Iran attack as Congress and others raise objections

According to President Trump, the United States attacked Iran because the Islamic Republic posed “imminent threats” to the U.S. and its allies, including through its use of terrorist proxies and continued pursuit of nuclear weapons.

“Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas and our allies throughout the world,” he said in a recorded statement Saturday.

According to leading Democrats in Congress, Trump’s justification is questionable, especially given his claims of having “completely obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities in separate U.S. bombings last June.

“Everything I have heard from the administration before and after these strikes on Iran confirms this is a war of choice with no strategic endgame,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and part of a small group of congressional leaders — the Gang of Eight — who were briefed on the operation by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

That divide is bound to remain an issue politically heading into this year’s midterm elections, and could be a liability for Republicans — especially considering that some in the “America First” wing of the MAGA base were raising their own objections, citing Trump’s 2024 campaign pledges to extricate the U.S. from foreign wars, not start new ones.

The debate echoed a similar if less immediate one around President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, also based on claims that “weapons of mass destruction” posed an immediate threat. Those claims were later disproved by multiple findings that Iraq had no such arsenal, fueling recriminations from both political parties for years.

The latest divide also intensified unease over Congress ceding its wartime powers to the White House, which for years has assumed sweeping authority to attack foreign adversaries without direct congressional input in the name of addressing terrorism or preventing immediate harm to the nation or its troops.

Even prior to the weekend bombings, Democrats including Sen. Adam Schiff of California were pushing Congress to pass a resolution barring the Trump administration from attacking Iran without explicit congressional authorization.

“President Trump must come to Congress before using military force unless absolutely necessary to defend the United States from an imminent attack,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the armed services and foreign relations committees, said in a statement Thursday.

In justifying the daylight strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei just two days later, Trump accused the Iranian government of having “waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder” for nearly half a century — including through attacks on U.S. military assets and commercial shipping vessels abroad — and of having “armed, trained and funded terrorist militias” in multiple countries, including Hezbollah and Hamas.

Trump said that after the U.S. bombed Iran last summer, it had warned Tehran “never to resume” its pursuit of nuclear weapons. “Instead, they attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland,” he said.

Other Republican leaders largely backed the president.

“The United States did not start this conflict, but we will finish it. If you kill or threaten Americans anywhere in the world — as Iran has — then we will hunt you down, and we will kill you,” said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“Every president has talked about the threat posed by the Iranian regime. President Trump is the one with the courage to take bold, decisive action,” said Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi.

While Iran’s coordination with and sponsorship of groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas are well known, Trump’s claims about Tehran’s ongoing development of nuclear weapons systems are less established — and the administration has provided little evidence to back them up.

Democrats seized on that lack of fresh intelligence in their responses to the attacks, contrasting Trump’s latest statements about imminent threats with his assertion after last year’s bombings that the U.S. had all but eliminated Iran’s nuclear aspirations.

“Let’s be clear: The Iranian regime is horrible. But I have seen no imminent threat to the United States that would justify putting American troops in harm’s way,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Gang of Eight. “What is the motivation here? Is it Iran’s nuclear program? Their missiles? Regime change?”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that the Trump administration “has not provided Congress and the American people with critical details about the scope and immediacy of the threat,” and must do so.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said the Trump administration needs congressional authority to wage such attacks barring “exigent circumstances,” and didn’t have it.

“The Trump administration must explain itself to the American people and Congress immediately, provide an ironclad justification for this act of war, clearly define the national security objective and articulate a plan to avoid another costly, prolonged military quagmire in the Middle East,” he said.

After the U.S. military announced Sunday that three U.S. service personnel were killed and five others seriously wounded in the attacks, the demands for a clearer justification and new constraints on Trump only increased.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) said Sunday he is optimistic that Democrats will be unified in trying to pass the war powers resolution, and also that some Republicans will join them, given that the strikes have been unpopular among a portion of the MAGA base.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who partnered with Khanna to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, has said he will work with him again to push a congressional vote on war with Iran, which he said was “not ‘America First.’”

Benjamin Radd, a political scientist and senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, said that whether or not Iran represented an “imminent” threat to the U.S. depends not just on its nuclear capabilities, but on its broader desire and ability to inflict pain on the U.S. and its allies — as was made clear to both the U.S. and Israel after the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which Iran praised.

“If you are Israel or the United States, that’s imminent,” he said.

What happens next, Radd said, will largely depend on whether remaining Iranian leaders stick to Khamenei’s hard-line policies, or decide to negotiate anew with the U.S. He expects they might do the latter, because “it’s a fundamentalist regime, it’s not a suicidal regime,” and it’s now clear that the U.S. and Israel have the capabilities to take out Iranian leaders, Iran has little ability to defend itself, and China and Russia are not rushing to its aid.

How the strikes are viewed moving forward may also depend on what those leaders decide to do next, said Kevan Harris, an associate professor of sociology who teaches courses on Iran and Middle East politics at the UCLA International Institute.

If the conflict remains relatively contained, it could become a political win for Trump, with questions about the justification falling away. But if it spirals out of control, such questions are likely to only grow, as occurred in Iraq when things started to deteriorate there, he said.

Israel and the U.S. are betting that the conflict will remain manageable, which could turn out to be true, Harris said, but “the problem with war is you never really know what might happen.”

On Sunday, Iran launched retaliatory attacks on Israel and the wider Gulf region. Trump said the campaign against Iran continued “unabated,” though he may be willing to negotiate with the nation’s new leaders. It was unclear when Congress might take up the war powers measure.

Politics

Video: Trump’s War of Choice With Iran

Published

11 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

new video loaded: Trump’s War of Choice With Iran

Our national security correspondent David E. Sanger examines the war of choice that President Trump has initiated with Iran.

By David E. Sanger, Gilad Thaler, Thomas Vollkommer and Laura Salaberry

March 1, 2026

Politics

Dems’ potential 2028 hopefuls come out against US strikes on Iran

Published

12 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Dems’ potential 2028 hopefuls come out against US strikes on Iran

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Some of the top rumored Democratic potential candidates for president in 2028 are showing a united front in opposing U.S. strikes on Iran, with several high-profile figures accusing President Donald Trump of launching an unnecessary and unconstitutional war.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris said Trump was “dragging the United States into a war the American people do not want.”

“Let me be clear: I am opposed to a regime-change war in Iran, and our troops are being put in harm’s way for the sake of Trump’s war of choice,” Harris said in a statement Saturday following the joint U.S. and Israeli strikes throughout Iran.

“This is a dangerous and unnecessary gamble with American lives that also jeopardizes stability in the region and our standing in the world,” she continued. “What we are witnessing is not strength. It is recklessness dressed up as resolve.”

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and California Gov. Gavin Newsom are leading Democratic 2028 hopefuls who spoke out against U.S. strikes on Iran. (Big Event Media/Getty Images for HumanX Conference; Reuters/Liesa Johannssen; Mario Tama/Getty Images)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom delivered some of his sharpest criticism during a book tour stop Saturday night in San Francisco, accusing Trump of manufacturing a crisis.

“It stems from weakness masquerading as strength,” Newsom said. “He lied to you. So reckless is the only way to describe this.”

“He didn’t describe to the American people what the endgame is here,” Newsom added. “There wasn’t one. He manufactured it.”

Newsom is currently promoting his memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry,” with recent and upcoming stops in South Carolina, New Hampshire and Nevada — three key early voting states in the Democratic presidential calendar.

Earlier in the day, Newsom said Iran’s “corrupt and repressive” regime must never obtain nuclear weapons and that the “leadership of Iran must go.”

“But that does not justify the President of the United States engaging in an illegal, dangerous war that will risk the lives of our American service members and our friends without justification to the American people,” Newsom wrote on X.

California is home to more than half of the roughly 400,000 Iranian immigrants in the United States, including a large community in West Los Angeles often referred to as “Tehrangeles.”

DEMOCRATS BUCK PARTY LEADERS TO DEFEND TRUMP’S ‘DECISIVE ACTION’ ON IRAN

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a leading progressive voice and “Squad” member, accused Trump of dragging Americans into a conflict they did not support.

“The American people are once again dragged into a war they did not want by a president who does not care about the long-term consequences of his actions. This war is unlawful. It is unnecessary. And it will be catastrophic,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

“Just this week, Iran and the United States were negotiating key measures that could have staved off war. The President walked away from these discussions and chose war instead,” she continued.

“In moments of war, our Constitution is unambiguous: Congress authorizes war. The President does not,” she said, pledging to vote “YES on Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie’s War Powers Resolution.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker criticized the strikes and accused Trump of ignoring Congress. (Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for Vox Media)

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another Democrat often mentioned as a potential 2028 contender, also criticized the strikes and accused Trump of ignoring Congress.

“No justification, no authorization from Congress, and no clear objective,” Pritzker wrote on X.

“Donald Trump is once again sidestepping the Constitution and once again failing to explain why he’s taking us into another war,” he continued. “Americans asked for affordable housing and health care, not another potentially endless conflict.”

“God protect our troops,” Pritzker added.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro focused his criticism on war powers, arguing Trump acted outside constitutional guardrails.

“In our democracy, the American people — through our elected representatives — decide when our nation goes to war,” Shapiro said, adding that Trump “acted unilaterally — without Congressional approval.”

JONATHAN TURLEY: TRUMP STRIKES IRAN — PRECEDENT AND HISTORY ARE ON HIS SIDE

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro focused his criticism on war powers, arguing Trump acted outside constitutional guardrails. (Rachel Wisniewski/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“Make no mistake, the Iranian regime represses its own people… they must never be allowed to possess nuclear weapons,” he said. “But that does not justify the President of the United States engaging in an illegal, dangerous war.”

Shapiro added that “Congress must use all available power” to prevent further escalation.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also accused Trump of launching a “war of choice.”

“The President has launched our nation and our great military into a war of choice, risking American lives and resources, ignoring American law, and endangering our allies and partners,” Buttigieg wrote on X. “This nation learned the hard way that an unnecessary war, with no plan for what comes next, can lead to years of chaos and put America in still greater danger.”

Buttigieg has been hitting early voting states, stopping in New Hampshire and Nevada in recent weeks to campaign for Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., who has been floated as a rising national figure within the party, said he lost friends in Iraq to an illegal war and opposed the strikes.

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“Young working-class kids should not pay the ultimate price for regime change and a war that hasn’t been explained or justified to the American people. We can support the democracy movement and the Iranian people without sending our troops to die,” Gallego wrote on X.

Fox News’ Daniel Scully and Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.

Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.

You can send tips to michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.