Trump vows to ‘substantially’ cut China tariffs
US President Donald Trump says the US will not play “hardball” with China, pledging that tariffs will ultimately not be “anywhere near” the current 145 per cent.
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US President Donald Trump says the US will not play “hardball” with China, telling reporters that tariffs on Chinese imports would be reduced “substantially” and would ultimately not be “anywhere near” the current 145 per cent.
“It won’t be that high, not going to be that high,” Mr Trump told an Oval Office press conference on Wednesday.
Mr Trump said he believed a tariff deal with China could happen “pretty quickly”.
“They’re gonna do very well, and I think they’re going to be happy, and we’re gonna live together very happily and ideally work together,” he said.
“So I think it’s gonna work out very well.”
His comments came after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a speech that the ongoing tariffs showdown against China was unsustainable and that he expected a “de-escalation” in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
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TRUMP FLOATS BABY BONUS
The Trump administration is considering offering US$5000 baby bonuses for new parents in a bid to halt declining birthrates in the United States.
A range of measures are being considered by the White House including fertility education and scholarships reserved for parents, the New York Times reports.
Among the options is a A$7826 lump sum cash payment for new parents, similar to the initiative introduced in Australia by the Howard government in 2004.
At the time, then-treasurer Peter Costello asked families to have “one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country”.
Donald Trump has been vocal about his support of traditional family values and has already signed an executive order seeking to reduce barriers to IVF for Americans, including by protecting access and reducing out-of-pocket expenses.
“Because we want more babies, to put it very nicely,” Mr Trump said at the time.
“But the IVF treatments are expensive.
“It’s very hard for many people to do it and to get it, but I’ve been in favour of IVF, right from the beginning.”
More than 85,000 children were born as a result of IVF in the US in 2021 and the cost ranges from A$92,000 to A$39,000 per cycle.
Mr Trump’s White House has been particularly child friendly, with Tesla billionaire Elon Musk regularly bringing his young son X to events.
NEWS BOSS QUITS AFTER TRUMP LAWSUIT
Longtime American 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens abruptly quit on Wednesday AEST, citing a loss of journalistic independence as CBS’ parent company Paramount Global looks to settle a lawsuit from President Trump.
“Over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience,” Owens wrote in a memo to staff which was obtained by The New York Post.
He added: “So, having defended this show – and what we stand for – from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward.”
Owens is just the third person to helm the iconic Sunday evening news magazine in its 57-year history.
His departure marks a critical juncture for CBS News, which has come under increasing external and internal pressure – most notably from Trump and Paramount Global.
Trump filed a A$31 billion lawsuit accusing the program of “unlawful and illegal behaviour” for what he claims was deceptive editing of 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris last October.
He has demanded a retraction and even suggested CBS’s broadcast license be revoked.
NATIONS COULD FACE 3521 PER CENT TARIFF
The United States on Tuesday AEST announced its intention to impose tariffs of up to 3,521 per cent on solar panels from Southeast Asia, a move aimed at countering alleged Chinese subsidies and dumping in the sector.
The tariffs on companies from Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam will still need to be ratified at a meeting of the International Trade Commission in June.
The decision unveiled Monday comes after anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations filed around a year ago by several US and other solar manufacturers.
Those companies took aim at “unfair practices” that were said to have weighed on the US domestic solar market, particularly raising concern over Chinese-headquartered companies operating out of the Southeast Asian countries.
HARVARD SUES TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
Harvard has sued Donald Trump’s administration in a sharp escalation of the fight between the prestigious university and the Republican, who has threatened its funding and sought to impose outside political supervision.
President Trump has sought to bring several prestigious universities to heel over claims they tolerated campus anti-Semitism, threatening their budgets, tax-exempt status and the enrolment of foreign students, but Harvard has refused to bow.
“This case involves the Government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decision making at Harvard,” the Ivy League university said in a lawsuit filed in a Massachusetts federal court that named several other institutions targeted by Mr Trump.
“The Government’s actions flout not just the First Amendment, but also federal laws and regulations,” said the complaint, which called Trump’s actions “arbitrary and capricious.”
CHINA BLASTS NATIONS TRYING TO ‘APPEASE’ US
China has hit out at other countries making trade deals with the United States at Beijing’s expense, promising countermeasures against those who “appease” Washington in the
blistering tariff war.
While the rest of the world has been slapped with a blanket 10 per cent tariff, China faces levies of up to 145 per cent on many products. Beijing has responded with duties of 125 per cent on US goods.
A number of countries are now engaged in negotiations with the US to lower tariffs, parallel to Washington’s full trade war against top US economic rival China.
But Beijing warned nations not to seek a deal with the US that compromised its interests.
“Appeasement will not bring peace, and compromise will not be respected,” a spokesperson for Beijing’s commerce ministry said in a statement.
“To seek one’s own temporary selfish interests at the expense of others’ interests is to seek the skin of a tiger,” Beijing said.
That approach, it warned, “will ultimately fail on both ends and harm others”.
“China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests,” the spokesperson said.
“If such a situation occurs, China will never accept it and will resolutely take reciprocal countermeasures,” they added.
US President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin.
Mr Trump said last week that the US was in talks with China on tariffs, adding that he was confident the world’s largest economies could make a deal to end the bitter trade war.
“Yeah, we’re talking to China,” Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“I would say they have reached out a number of times.” “I think we’re going to make a very good deal with China,” he said at the White House.
China has vowed to fight a trade war “to the end” and has not confirmed that it is in talks with Washington, though it has called for dialogue.
It has slammed what it calls “unilateralism and protectionism” by the US and warned about an international order reverting to the “law of the jungle”.
“Where the strong prey on the weak, all countries will become victims,” Beijing said.
TRUMP’S DEFENCE SECRETARY IN SECOND TEXTING SCANDAL
Donald Trump’s Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen in a second private Signal group chat, it’s been claimed.
The chat on the commercial messaging app occurred on March 15 and included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to The New York Times.
It comes weeks after the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg claimed he was added to a Signal chat group with high-ranking US security officials – including Hegseth – who were discussing US air strikes on Yemen.
The outlet said that unlike the accidental leak where journalist Goldberg was mistakenly included in the group, this group chat was created by Hegseth. The other chat was initiated by Waltz.
“Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic,” the publication reports.
Hegseth is yet to issue a response to the report. He is already under investigation by the Pentagon inspector general’s office over the first scandal.
Hegseth’s wife, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defence Department employee. She, however, has accompanied him overseas on multiple occasions.
The defence secretary’s brother and lawyer, Tim Parlatore, have jobs in the Pentagon.
Responding to the second Signal row, an official told the publication: “The truth is that there is an informal group chat that started before confirmation of his closest advisers. Nothing classified was ever discussed on that chat.”
RFK SAYS AUTISM DWARFS COVID-19
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr is declaring a war on autism — claiming the neurodevelopmental condition is an epidemic that’s far worse than the deadly Covid-19 outbreak, The New York Post reports.
“This is an epidemic. It dwarfs the Covid epidemic and the impacts on our country because Covid killed old people,” Kennedy said Sunday on “The Cats Roundtable” radio show on WABC 770 AM.
“Autism affects children and affects them at the beginning of their lives, the beginning of their productivity,” the 71-year-old told host John Catsimatidis.
One in every 31 Americans is now diagnosed, Kennedy added, insisting that the economic cost of autism will skyrocket to $US1 trillion a year by 2035.
“About 26 per cent of them have no capacity [to live independently]. And the indications are they never will,” the HHS secretary said.
“We’re taking kids that should be healthy, that should be contributing to society … that should be … reaching their potential … and we’re injuring them very early in life. It’s an epidemic,” he said.
– with AFP
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Originally published as Trump vows to ‘substantially’ cut China tariffs
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