Joe Biden announced plans to triple tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum and promised to block the acquisition of US Steel by a Japanese company during a speech to steelworkers on Wednesday in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, where union support could prove crucial in the November general election. Biden touted the plan during a visit to the United Steelworkers union headquarters in Pittsburgh, the heart of the American steel industry, where he said “the backbone of America has a steel spine” and promised to keep US Steel as a…
Tag: Biden administration
The new world disorder: how the Gaza war disrupted international relations
Not long ago a picture circulated from inside Gaza showing smoke billowing from the explosion of a US-supplied bomb, and discernible in the background was the outline of eight black parachutes dropping US aid in precisely the same neighbourhood. It was suggested that the picture would make an ideal cover for any book about the confused world disorder that the six-month war in Gaza have spawned – a disorder that as yet has no dominant player, value system or functioning institutions. The great powers compete, coexist or confront one another…
US reprimands Microsoft for security failures that allowed Chinese hack
In a scathing indictment of Microsoft corporate security and transparency, a Biden administration-appointed review board issued a report Tuesday saying “a cascade of errors” by the tech giant let state-backed Chinese cyber operators break into email accounts of senior US officials including commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo. The Cyber Safety Review Board, created in 2021 by executive order, describes shoddy cybersecurity practices, a lax corporate culture and a lack of sincerity about the company’s knowledge of the targeted breach, which affected multiple US agencies that deal with China. It concluded that…
‘A 1939 moment’: Jim Sciutto on Russia, China and the threat of war
At CNN in Washington, Jim Sciutto’s dimly lit office is both man cave and shrine to a foreign correspondent who has reported from more than 50 countries. A typewriter he bought on Portobello Road during a decade in London. Photos he took in Afghanistan and Ukraine. A Vietnamese newspaper account of the time he rode over the South China Sea on a US spy plane. A corked bottle of water from his trip to the North Pole in a US nuclear submarine. A fragment of the Black Hawk helicopter destroyed…
Biden’s China summit was a reminder: the US should talk to its rivals more often | Christopher S Chivvis
Wednesday’s meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping was a lot harder to pull off than the photographs of the two leaders ambling around the gardens of the Filoli mansion outside San Francisco may have made it appear. The White House has spent the last 10 months working to restore dialogue after years of mounting tension that most recently featured an errant Chinese observation balloon and possible Chinese military support for Russia’s war on Ukraine. In the process of working toward the meeting, the White House faced strong domestic political…
China praises ‘warm’ Xi-Biden meeting in change of rhetoric
China has praised the “warm” meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in California, in a marked shift of rhetoric after months of negotiations aimed at restabilising what has been a testy relationship. A readout from China’s foreign ministry said the US-China relationship was “the most important bilateral relationship in the world” and that “a stable and growing China is good for the United States and the whole world”. Official rhetoric from Beijing has moved in recent months from a more aggressive stance on the US to a more conciliatory…
US and China’s joint climate plan leaves key questions unanswered
The US and China’s decision to rekindle a joint effort to tackle the climate crisis has provided sorely needed momentum ahead of crucial UN climate talks later this month, while still leaving some key questions unresolved around calling an end to the fossil fuel era. The difficult relationship between the world’s two largest carbon emitters has somewhat thawed over the issue of global heating, with both sides indicating they see it as a shared menace set aside from other tensions around trade or the status of Taiwan. The US and…
Xi Jinping in US for first time in six years to meet with Biden and attend summit
Xi Jinping began his first visit to the United States in six years on Tuesday just after US secretary of state Antony Blinken took a thinly veiled swipe at Beijing by stressing the need for freedoms and rule of law. The Chinese president is on his first visit to the US since 2017. He is due to meet Joe Biden at an undisclosed location in San Francisco on Wednesday morning and then attend the annual summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum. Xi’s summit with the US president…
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping meeting a step closer, says US
The US and China have agreed to work towards setting up a meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping after the US president met with China’s foreign minister on Friday. Biden has invited Xi to San Francisco in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit. The Chinese president has not yet confirmed he will come. Biden held talks with Wang Yi and other senior US officials in Washington, the White House said, with both countries agreeing to keep up “high-level diplomacy” to try to smooth ties. The two sides…
The Camp David summit signals a new cold war – this time with China | Observer editorial
If it sounds like a new cold war and looks like a new cold war, then it probably is a new cold war. For what other interpretation is to be placed on US president Joe Biden’s latest ramping up of diplomatic, economic and military pressure on China? Western officials tend to avoid the term, recalling as it does decades of hair-trigger confrontation with the former Soviet Union. They talk instead about enhanced security and defence cooperation and the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific region. But such bland generalisations…