Torbjørn Færøvik's Blog, page 102

A Trade War With China Is a Very Bad Idea

This much seems clear: The Trump administration is executing its trade war with China with the same care and thoughtfulness with which it accidentally cut the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Security Administration, mistakenly offered buyouts to mission-critical workers in the Veterans Affairs office, and proposed sudden cuts to customer-service employees at the Social Security Administration.

Trump's tariffs leave China's neighbours with an impossible choice

When US President Donald Trump hit China with tariffs in his first term, Vietnamese entrepreneur Hao Le saw an opportunity. His company is one of hundreds of businesses that have emerged to compete with Chinese exports that have increasingly been facing restrictions from the West.Le's SHDC Electronics, which sits in the budding industrial hub of Hai Duong, sells $2m (£1.5m) worth of phone and

Nvidia: The AI chip giant caught between US and China

Computer chip giant Nvidia has once again found itself at the centre of US-China tensions over trade and technology. On Thursday Nvidia's chief executive Jensen Huang flew to Beijing to meet senior Chinese officials, just after the US imposed new export controls on its chips.The California-based company will require licenses to export its H20 AI chip to China, a move which the US Commerce

Designed in US, made in China: Why Apple is stuck

Every iPhone comes with a label which tells you it was designed in California. While the sleek rectangle that runs many of our lives is indeed designed in the United States, it is likely to have come to life thousands of miles away in China: the country hit hardest by US President Donald Trump's tariffs, now rising to 245% on some Chinese imports.Apple sells more than 220 million iPhones a year

The US wants to charge Chinese ships to dock at American ports

The United States has unveiled plans to impose new port fees on Chinese ships, saying it aims to revive American shipbuilding against China’s dominance in the industry. President Donald Trump has embarked on a sweeping trade war with China, a move his administration portrays as a bid to bring manufacturing back to the United States but that critics and many economists fear could trigger a global

He’s been dead for more than 300 years. So why is this emperor angering millions today?

Despite being dead for more than 300 years, this Indian ruler is still making waves in the nation’s politics. Aurangzeb Alamgir has become so central to India’s fraught political moment, his memory is leading to sectarian violence across the country.The sixth emperor of the famed Mughal dynasty, he is considered by many detractors to be a tyrant who brutalized women, razed Hindu temples, forced

Murong Xuecun: Online dissent is a serious crime in China. So why did a Weibo censor help me publish posts critical of the Communist party?

It is 2013. For four full months, Liu Lipeng engages in dereliction of duty. Every hour the system sends him a huge volume of posts, but he hardly ever deletes a single word. After three or four thousand posts accumulate, he lightly clicks his mouse and the whole lot is released. In the jargon of censors, this is a “total pass in one click”, after which all the posts appear on China’s version of

China appoints new trade envoy in face of tariff turmoil

China has unexpectedly appointed a new trade envoy, as officials said the US's practice of "tariff barriers and trade bullying" is having a serious impact on the global economic order. Li Chenggang, a former assistant commerce minister and WTO ambassador, is taking over from veteran trade negotiator Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen.The shift comes as Beijing refuses to back down in an

Why China curbing rare earth exports is a blow to the US

As the trade war between China and the US escalates, attention has been focused on the increasingly high levels of tit-for-tat tariffs the two countries are imposing on one another. But slapping reciprocal tariffs on Washington is not the only way Beijing has been able to retaliate. China has now also imposed export controls on a range of critical rare earth minerals and magnets, dealing a major

The US–China ‘decoupling’ would be a messy divorce

Even if the writing has been on the wall for years, breaking up is never easy. China and the US don’t often see eye to eye, but for decades, they have broadly agreed that it is better to be trade partners than trade enemies. That alliance is now hanging by a thread. And the real-world collateral damage is already piling up.The presidents of the world’s two biggest economies don’t appear ready to