🇺🇸💲❌🇨🇳 — 📰 ZeroHedge | Bessent's Grand Strategy: Use Tariff Negotiations To Isolate China From The Rest Of The World | April 16, 2025:

"(...) Trump laid out the stakes in the ever-escalating trading war between the US and China, in typical laconic fashion: "We may want countries to choose between us and China" (a topic discussed further here), with the White House adding that "The ball is in China’s court. China needs to make a deal with us."

This strategy, of forcing the world into "us (or US) vs them" camps first emerged last week when Trump reduced reciprocal tariffs for all countries except China, something we highlighted at the time.

A few days later, this now appears to be the official strategy in the global trade war."

#WWT

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🇺🇸💲❌🇨🇳 — 📰 The Wall Street Journal | U.S. Plans to Use Tariff Negotiations to Isolate China | Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wants trading partners to limit China’s involvement in their economies in exchange for concessions on reciprocal tariffs | April 15, 2025:

"The Trump administration plans to use ongoing tariff negotiations to pressure U.S. trading partners to limit their dealings with China, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.

The idea is to extract commitments from U.S. trading partners to isolate China’s economy in exchange for reductions in trade and tariff barriers imposed by the White House. U.S. officials plan to use negotiations with more than 70 nations to ask them to disallow China to ship goods through their countries, prevent Chinese firms from locating in their territories to avoid U.S. tariffs, and not absorb China’s cheap industrial goods into their economies.

Those measures are meant to put a dent in China’s already rickety economy and force Beijing to the negotiating table with less leverage ahead of potential talks between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The exact demands could vary widely by nation, given their degree of involvement with the Chinese economy."

#Geoeconomics #WWT

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🇺🇸🏭❌🏭🇨🇳 — 📰 ZeroHedge | Made In China Vs Made In America | April 16, 2025:

"While China’s status as the world’s largest manufacturing hub seems to be a law of nature these days - one only challenged by President Trump - that hasn’t always been the case. 

In fact, as Statista's Felix Richter shows in the chart below, as recently as 2009, the U.S. trumped China in manufacturing output as measured by total value added in the sector."

#Geoeconomics #WWT

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🇨🇳 Exclusive—How China's Military is Quietly Gaining Control of the Pacific

China has quietly extended its military reach far across the Pacific by building dozens of ports, airports, and communications projects at key points in a vast region that could shut out the United States and its allies in the event of war, a new report says.

The projects appeared civilian in nature but were in reality "strategic nodes" stretching about 3,000 miles, from Papua New Guinea immediately north of U.S. ally Australia, to Samoa, which lies about 40 miles away from the U.S. territory of American Samoa in Polynesia, according to the new study made available exclusively to Newsweek. The remote, scattered islands of the Pacific were once crucial to American warfighting strategy in World War II, and they could play a role in the next global conflict, too.

The growing logistics network in the South Pacific—built mostly by Chinese state-owned companies with ties to its defense sector—was being overlooked even as Beijing's rivalry with the U.S. deepened and as China's overseas base ambitions elsewhere drew attention, said Domingo I-Kwei Yang, an assistant research fellow at Taiwan's Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), an institution funded by the government of self-ruled Taiwan, which China has threatened to invade.

"The question is not whether, but when, China will complete a civil-military logistics system in the Pacific," Yang said in China's Dual-Use Infrastructure in the Pacific, a study published on Monday as part of the Coastwatchers 2.0 Project, a collaboration between the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and Project Sinopsis, a research center in Prague in the Czech Republic.

https://www.newsweek.com/china-south-pacific-strategic-dual-use-infrastructure-us-military-2059048

🇮🇱💬🇺🇸➡️🇸🇾 — 🌟 Ynet | US tells Israel it will begin withdrawing troops from Syria within 2 months | First report: After Trump expressed empathy for Erdogan during his meeting with Netanyahu, Ynet has learned that Washington announced US forces in Syria will begin a phased withdrawal within two months; Israel is warning of the consequences and trying to prevent the move - amid fears that Turkey will take over more strategic assets in the new Syria | April 15, 2025:

"U.S. defense officials have informed their Israeli counterparts that the United States plans to begin a phased withdrawal of its troops from Syria within two months, according to information obtained by Ynet.

Despite previous Israeli efforts to prevent such a move, Washington has made it clear those efforts were unsuccessful. Still, Israeli defense officials are not giving up and continue to press the Biden administration to reconsider.

The planned withdrawal comes as no surprise. Former President Donald Trump, now back in office, had long promised to pull U.S. troops out of the region under his administration’s isolationist doctrine, influenced in part by Vice President J.D. Vance."

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🇬🇧🇾🇪🪖🗺 — British Royal Air Force (RAF) KC2 Voyager refueling aircraft (ZZ331) spotted flying back from Yemen

United Kingdom RAF participated on the bombing operations of the Houthi's Ras Isa Fuel Port

🇮🇱❌🇮🇷❗️ — Israeli preparations for an independent strike in Iran is underway, Israeli N12 News says, citing unspecified foreign reports!

Israel can launch effective assault on Iran's nuclear program even without US support, report says.

🇺🇸🇬🇧❌🇾🇪 — Major fires burning at the Ras Isa port on Yemen’s western coast, controlled by Houthi terrorists, following Joint US-UK airstrikes aimed at destroying the facility entirely

🔗 ELINT News (@ELINTNews)

🇻🇪🇻🇪❌🇪🇨❗️ — Ecuadorian Government reports that agents of Nicolás Maduro's regime raided a truck with unused electoral records.

The SEBIN (Venezuelan Regime Intelligence) intercepted the vehicle on the road.

🇨🇳 Nvidia’s CEO makes surprise visit to Beijing after US restricts chip sales to China

The chief executive of the American chip maker Nvidia visited Beijing on Thursday, days after the US issued fresh restrictions on sales of the only AI chip it was still allowed to sell to China.

Jensen Huang’s surprise visit was on the invitation of a trade organisation, according to a social media account affiliated with state media.

The official broadcaster China Central Television said Huang met Ren Hongbin, the head of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, where he said he hopes “to continue to cooperate with China”.

The visit caps a tumultuous week for Nvidia. The US restrictions, announced on Tuesday, apply to shipments of its H20 datacentre GPUs, a lower-powered version of other Nvidia chips, which was designed specifically to comply with Biden-era restrictions on sales to China.

The US government, which is battling China in the race for AI supremacy, told Nvidia the new rules were designed to address the risk that its products might be “used in, or diverted to, a supercomputer in China”.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/17/nvidias-ceo-surprise-visit-beijing-restricts-chip-sales-china

🇺🇸 Trump says Fed Chair Jerome Powell's "termination cannot come fast enough"

President Trump took aim at Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Thursday, writing in a social media post that Powell should be cutting interest rates and adding that his "termination cannot come fast enough."

Mr. Trump's comments on his social media app, Truth Social, come after Powell delivered a speech on Wednesday that warned of the potential consequences of the Trump administration's trade war, while reiterating that the central bank plans to hold interest rates steady for now.

In his social media post, Mr. Trump on Thursday pointed to the European Central Bank, which cut rates by 0.25 percentage points after the president posted his message.

"The ECB is expected to cut interest rates for the 7th time, and yet, 'Too Late' Jerome Powell of the Fed, who is always TOO LATE AND WRONG, yesterday issued a report which was another, and typical, complete 'mess!'" Mr. Trump wrote.

He added, "Oil prices are down, groceries (even eggs!) are down, and the USA is getting RICH ON TARIFFS. Too Late should have lowered Interest Rates, like the ECB, long ago, but he should certainly lower them now. Powell's termination cannot come fast enough!"

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-powell-federal-reserve-termination-fire-interest-rates/

🇨🇳🇲🇾 China’s Xi wraps up Malaysia visit with jet, chip deals before heading to Cambodia

Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up his first visit to Malaysia in over a decade on Thursday with a flurry of trade and investment pledges – including support for Chinese-made aircraft sales and semiconductor cooperation – as Beijing seeks to position itself as Southeast Asia’s most dependable partner amid Washington’s intensifying trade war.

Xi’s stop in Malaysia, part of a week-long tour of Southeast Asia, came in the wake of Washington’s announcement of sweeping tariffs on goods from the region, ranging from 24 to 49 per cent. Although these measures were subsequently suspended for 90 days, they have raised serious concerns about future access to American buyers.

During his stop in Kuala Lumpur – his first since 2013 – Xi oversaw the signing of dozens of agreements with Malaysia, including deals on railway and aviation cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as partnerships in technology and energy.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3306890/chinas-xi-wraps-malaysia-visit-jet-chip-deals-heading-cambodia

🇨🇳🇰🇭 China’s leader Xi Jinping holds talks in Cambodia to wrap up his 3-nation Southeast Asia tour

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Cambodia on Thursday for a two-day state visit that serves as an opportunity to further strengthen China’s already robust relations with its closest ally in Southeast Asia.

China is presenting itself as a source of stability and certainty as Southeast Asia; where Trump’s tariffs threaten the region’s export-oriented economies whose largest markets are generally the United States.

https://apnews.com/article/xi-jinping-hun-manet-ream-naval-base-cambodia-china-f477b79fd3bb2a08455e95b66acff53c

🇨🇳 "In 'cold war' of modern exchange rates, 'digital currencies from reserves are used'. However, when 'hot war' of major default does begin, 'nuclear weapons of GOLD' are deployed!"

-ANOTHER (THOUGHTS!), 5/21/98

🔗 Luke Gromen