According to state media, China cautioned US President Donald Trump on Monday that trade protectionism “leads nowhere,” advising him to refrain from escalating tensions into a trade war.
Guo Jiakun, the spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Beijing that “trade wars and tariff wars have no winners.”
Beijing’s remarks followed Trump’s declaration that a 25% tariff on all imports of steel and aluminum was a possibility.
Despite giving Canada and Mexico a one-month tariff reprieve, Trump continued to impose tariffs on Chinese goods without showing any indications of a trade agreement.
In response to the ongoing influx of fentanyl into the United States via Mexico and Canada, Trump has already implemented an additional 10% duty on Chinese goods.China responded with its own duties, which went into effect on Monday, of up to 15% on US imports, mostly affecting the energy industry and agricultural equipment.The Financial Times said that Beijing analysts think “talks might have stalled because Trump was demanding co-operation on other fronts, such as pressuring Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and/or ceding ownership of short video platform TikTok to an American buyer.”
The lethal drug fentanyl is now a major cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.
The US-China competition in artificial intelligence
According to the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, China “actively embraces intelligent transformation, vigorously promotes the innovative development and safety of AI, and supports and encourages enterprises to innovate independently, making positive contributions to the global development of artificial intelligence.” This is in reference to the Chinese open-source large model chatbot DeepSeek.
“China opposes drawing ideological lines, overstretching the concept of national security, and politicizing the economic and technology issues,” Guo stated. He added that Beijing “is willing to strengthen exchanges and cooperation in AI with all parties.”
Notably, DeepSeek, the most downloaded free software in the US and the cause of a worldwide tech sell-off, has been recommended to cease use by public employees in South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan.
The open-source, inexpensive generative AI tool’s ability to rival popular AI applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT shocked investors.
DeepSeek released its DeepSeek-R1 large language model on January 20 with support from the Chinese hedge firm High-Flyer.
Chinese state-run media reported that the majority of the hacks that targeted DeepSeek came from US IP addresses.
