Tag: International Trade and World Market

Trump’s 2025 Trade Agenda: A New Tax on Imports and a Split from China

Media Library

Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an aggressive expansion of his first-term efforts to upend America’s trade policies if he returns to power in 2025 — including imposing a new tax on “most imported goods” that would risk alienating allies and igniting a global trade war. While the Biden administration has kept tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on China, Mr. Trump would go far beyond that and try to wrench apart the world’s two largest economies, which exchanged some $758 billion in goods and services last year. Mr. Trump…

How China Is Profiting From Trade With Russia

Media Library

On China’s snowy border with Russia, a dealership that sells trucks has seen its sales double in the past year thanks to Russian customers. China’s exports to its neighbor are so strong that Chinese construction workers built warehouses and 20-story office towers at the border this summer. The border town Heihe is a microcosm of China’s ever closer economic relationship with Russia. China is profiting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has led Russia to switch from the West to China for purchases of everything from cars to computer chips.…

Chinese Traders and Moroccan Ports: How Russia Flouts Global Tech Bans

Media Library

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, engineers at Convex, a Russian telecommunications company, needed to find American equipment to transmit data to the country’s feared intelligence service. But no gear was flowing in after Western nations imposed sweeping new trade limits on Russia. Convex’s employees soon found a solution. While Cisco, a U.S. tech provider, had halted sales to Russia on March 3, 2022, Convex’s engineers easily obtained the Cisco gear they needed through an obscure Russian e-commerce site called Nag, which had gotten around international trade restrictions by…

The Debt Problem Is Enormous, and the System for Fixing It Is Broken

Media Library

Martin Guzman was a college freshman at La Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, in 2001 when a debt crisis prompted default, riots and a devastating depression. A dazed middle class suffered ruin, as the International Monetary Fund insisted that the government make misery-inducing budget cuts in exchange for a bailout. Watching Argentina unravel inspired Mr. Guzman to switch majors and study economics. Nearly two decades later, when the government was again bankrupt, it was Mr. Guzman as finance minister who negotiated with I.M.F. officials to restructure a $44 billion…

Lawmakers Call for Raising Tariffs and Severing Economic Ties With China

Media Library

Bipartisan lawmakers on Tuesday called for severing more of America’s economic and financial ties with China, including revoking the low tariff rates that the United States granted Beijing after it joined the World Trade Organization more than two decades ago. The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released a wide-ranging set of recommendations for resetting America’s economic relationship with China. The report, which was signed by both House Democrats and Republicans, argued that China had carried out a “multidecade campaign of economic aggression” that had undercut American firms,…

Why Volkswagen Is Hiring 3,000 Engineers in China

Media Library

A bright orange robot, 10 feet tall, looms over Volkswagen’s new electric car assembly line in central China. It was imported from Germany. The factory’s other 1,074 robots were made in Shanghai. Volkswagen used to import shock absorbers from Central Europe for cars it makes at Chinese factories. Now it buys them from a company in China for 40 percent less. After relying for decades on engineers in Germany to design cars for the Chinese market, Volkswagen has begun hiring for a team of nearly 3,000 Chinese engineers, which will…

Tiny Electric Vehicles Pack a Bigger Climate Punch Than Cars

Media Library

In Darbhanga, a new acid-battery rickshaw, like the one Mr. Rai drives, sells for around 175,000 rupees, or $2,100. That’s half the price of a new rickshaw powered by natural gas. Charging the battery costs 20 rupees (25 cents), one-fourth of the price of filling a gas tank. The rebates seem to be working. Reliance Industries, India’s biggest company, is converting its three-wheeled cargo vehicles from gas to electric. Food delivery services are going electric as quickly as possible. Chetan Maini, whose company Sun Mobility builds charging infrastructure, said business…

Lawmakers Press Biden Administration for Tougher Curbs on China Tech

Media Library

Republican lawmakers are faulting the Biden administration’s enforcement of restrictions on China’s access to American technology, saying that the administration is still allowing semiconductors and other American innovation to flow to Beijing that could ultimately aid China in a military conflict. In a report released on Thursday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee said the administration had failed to enforce export controls that limit sales of advanced technology to China. The federal government has been steadily ramping up limits on sales to China of advanced chips and chip-making equipment over the…

China and E.U. Leaders Met as Tensions Rise Over Russia

Media Library

Leaders of the European Union pressed China on the country’s trade imbalance with Europe and its support for Russia during a visit to Beijing on Thursday that highlighted the growing tensions between the two sides. The meeting, which took place in separate sessions between China’s leaders, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang, and Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, was the first in-person summit of the leaders of China and the European Union in more than…

The Clock is Ticking on Improving China-U.S. Relations, Experts Say

Media Library

“There isn’t a clear message from the U. S., or the rest of us saying, ‘Here is an economic proposition. Here is why we think that working with us is going to be good for you in the long term. And here is what flows from that,’” she said. “Like who is a friend, right? Why are they a friend? What are the benefits of being a friend? What are the risks of not being a friend? “ The discussion also veered into larger geopolitical issues — mainly Taiwan and…