A Commerce Department spokesman said on Sunday ( Aug 4 ) that the agency was “preoccupied about the national security risks associated with connected technologies in connected vehicles when asked for comment. A proposed law, which” may focus on specific techniques of concern within the automobile,” will be published byContinue Reading
PUBLISHED: 4 Aug 2024 at 16: 21
Local truck operators claim that the use of Thai contenders and the flow of lorries from China are seriously hurting their businesses.
Thongyoo Kongkhan, the chairman of the Land Transport Federation of Thailand ( LTFT), demanded on Sunday that the government intervene in order to safeguard local truck operators. He intends to request a conference with Transport Minister Suriya Jungrungreangkit in order to address the issue.
Mr. Thongyoo claimed that Thai nominations helped Taiwanese businessmen run “full-scale” freight truck companies and construct stores.
According to the Asean-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA ),” the application of the Asean-China Free Trade Agreement has resulted in a significant increase in Chinese exports to Thailand and truck-imported goods are transported there. Nearly all of the cars are owned by candidate firms”, the LTFT chaiman said.
” It’s estimated that the Chinese trucks account for 1 % of total vehicle figures in Thailand, about 10, 000. The figure is anticipated to increase annually on average by 1 %.
According to Mr. Thongyoo, the majority of the vehicles that LTFT members own have been parked as a result of higher fuel prices, lower hiring rates, and a 3-9 % increase in transportation costs.  ,
He expressed concern about the Chinese truck operators ‘ pricing practices for distribution service charges.  ,
” Local logistics and truck entrepreneurs will suffer significantly if the government does n’t prepare but instead implements effective countermeasures.” The organization will send a letter to the travel agency representatives asking for a meeting.  ,
Other topics on the plan will be truck imports and the opening of large-scale warehouses by foreign companies, which are becoming increasingly frequent. This will significantly influence the ten-wheeler users in Thailand,” the LTFT key added.
In addition, the Department of Land Transport ( DLT) made a statement citing section 24 of the 1979 Land Transport Act, which requires any juristic person seeking to register with Thai law and have its head office established there. No less than half of the table members may be Thai immigrants, and no less than 51 % of the company’s capital may be held by owners who are Thai folks. According to the statement, the license programs have been thoroughly reviewed and approved in accordance with the laws.
Concerning concerns about Chinese import and export firms that are suspected of employing Thai nominations, the DLT will request from the commerce and finance ministries to coordinate and avoid any adverse effects to local truck companies ‘ business operations.
Regarding the issue of cars from China operating in Thailand, the DLT made it clear that they can work if their requirements and import laws are met and they are officially imported.
However, the ministry said that now there are some 8, 473 registered transport cars from Chinese companies, some of whom have established manufacturing outposts in Thailand.
Any company can be used by the shipping companies to match their budget and business needs. ” the statement said.
Each member nation ( except Myanmar ) has the authority to issue a maximum of 500 cross-border road transport permits in their country under the Memorandum of Understanding ( MOU) relating to the “early harvest” implementation of the cross-border transport facilitation agreement signed by transport ministers from six countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion ( GMS ) effective from April this year until 2026.
According to the DLT, 11 Thai transport companies with a combined 458 vehicles have submitted applications for the grants and are scheduled to start operating next month.  ,
Both pleased and frightened by recent advances in engineering and scientific knowledge. They will undoubtedly remain to.
OpenAI just announced that it anticipates” superintelligence” – AI surpassing human powers – this century. In response, it is reassembling a new group and investing 20 % of its technology solutions in ensuring that such AI systems ‘ behavior is in line with individual beliefs.
It seems they do n’t want rogue artificial superintelligences waging war on humanity, as in James Cameron’s 1984 science fiction thriller, The Terminator ( ominously, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator is sent back in time from 2029 ). Best machine-learning scientists and engineers are needed to assist them in resolving the issue.
But does philosophers have something to help? What can be anticipated of the discipline’s age-old status in the midst of the newest, technologically advanced age?
To start, it is important to point out that idea has been a key component of AI’s development since its conception. One of the first Artificial success stories was a 1956 computer software, dubbed the the Logic Theorist, created by Allen Newell and Herbert Simon.
The thinkers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell’s 1910 work, Principia Mathematica, whose goal was to put all of mathematics on a single logical foundation, used propositions from its work to show theorems.
However, the first advances in logic in AI were largely due to the fundamental debates that mathematicians and philosophers pursued.
The late 19th century’s development of modern logic by European philosopher Gottlob Frege was a major step. Frege introduced quantitative factors into logic more than physical objects like people.
His method made it possible to say not only, for case,” Joe Biden is leader” but also to consistently communicate such general thoughts as that” there exists an X for that X is president”, where” there exists” is a quantifier, and” X” is a variable.
Another significant figures in the 1930s included Polish mathematician Alfred Tarski’s “proof of the indefinability of truth” and Austrian-born mathematician Kurt Gödel, whose proofs of accuracy and uncertainty are about the limits of what can be proven.
The former showed that” reality” in any standard official system cannot be defined within that particular program, but that arithmetical wisdom, for example, may be defined within the structure of arithmetic.
Lastly, Alan Turing’s abstract conception of a computer from 1936 influenced earlier AI greatly.
It might be said, however, that even if such great conventional symbolic AI was obliged to high-level beliefs and reasoning, the” second-wave” AI, based on deep understanding, derives more from the practical engineering feats associated with processing large quantities of data.
Still, philosophy has played a role here too. Take large language models, such as the one that powers ChatGPT, which produces conversational text. They are enormous models, with billions or even trillions of parameters, trained on vast datasets (typically comprising much of the internet ).
They primarily monitor and exploit statistical patterns of language usage, but they do so at the very core. In the middle of the 20th century, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein espoused the idea that” the meaning of a word is its use in the language.”
But contemporary philosophy, and not just its history, is relevant to AI and its development. An LLM could actually comprehend the language being processed. Might it achieve consciousness? These are deeply philosophical questions.
Science has so far failed to fully explain how the human brain’s cells are created. Some philosophers even believe that this is such a “hard problem” that is beyond the scope of science, and may require a helping hand of philosophy.
In a similar vein, we can ask whether an image-generating AI could be truly creative. British cognitive scientist and AI philosopher Margaret Boden claims that AI will struggle to evaluate new ideas as creative people do.
She also anticipates that only a hybrid ( neural-symbolic ) architecture, which incorporates both deep learning from data and logical techniques, will produce artificial general intelligence.
In response to our inquiry about the role of philosophy in the era of AI, ChatGPT responded to our request that it “helps ensure that the development and use of AI are aligned with human values.”
In this context, perhaps we should be allowed to say that AI alignment is a social issue that engineers or tech companies must address in addition to the technical one. That will require input from philosophers, but also social scientists, lawyers, policymakers, citizen users and others.
In fact, many people are concerned about how much tech companies are becoming more powerful and influential and how they impact democracy. Some claim that we need to consider AI in a whole new way while also considering the underlying systems that support the sector.
For instance, the British barrister and author Jamie Susskind has argued that a “digital republic” is necessary, one that ultimately rejects the very political and economic system that has given tech companies such a powerful influence.
Finally, let us briefly ask, how will AI affect philosophy? Formal logic in philosophy actually dates to Aristotle’s work in antiquity. The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz suggested that a” calculus ratiocinator” might one day be developed, a calculating device that would enable us to interpret philosophical and scientific ideas in a quasi-oracular manner.
Some authors advocate a” computational philosophy,” which literally entails assumptions and derives consequences from them, and perhaps we are now beginning to realize that vision. This ultimately allows factual and/or value-oriented assessments of the outcomes.
The PolyGraphs project, for instance, simulates the effects of social media sharing. Then, using this information, we can computationally examine the formative nature of our opinions.
Certainly, progress in AI has given philosophers plenty to think about, it may even have begun to provide some answers.
Brian Ball is an associate professor of philosophy at Northeastern University London, and Anthony Grayling is a professor of philosophy at Northeastern University London.
The Conversation has republished this article under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The fish source investigation is still ongoing.
PUBLISHED: 3 Aug 2024 at 07: 15
The Department of Fisheries has contacted Ghana to find out if the aggressive bass species ‘ outbreak in Thailand was the result of its cooperation.
The department’s director-general, Bancha Sukkaew, said yesterday the department had sent a letter requesting DNA or some samples of the blackchin tilapia from Ghana, which was the country that Charoen Pokphand Foods ( CPF ) reportedly sought permission to import the fish from for R&, D purposes in 2010.
He said the data will be used to evaluate the DNA of the aggressive species found in 17 regions, including Chanthaburi, Rayong, and Bangkok.
Atthakorn Sirilatthayakorn, assistant secretary of agriculture and partnerships, said the department received positive feedback after offering to get blackchin fish for 15 baht/kg, which will be used for making fertilisers. He said the government hopes the coverage will help remove four million kilos of blackchin tilapia from ponds and waterways by the middle of next year.
However, the House committee on preventing the fish’s multiply has sought legal counsel to file a complaint against the private business that is alleged to have caused their disperse, with damages estimated at 10 billion baht.
A member of CPF before submitted a report to the Higher Education, Science and Innovation Committee, denying being the source of the problem. It explained that the company requested permission to buy 2, 000 blackchin fish fingerlings from Ghana on December 22, 2010 for R&D functions at its Samut Songkhram breading factory. Some fish died while being transported, and merely 600 reportedly remained. But, all the bass died within three months, the company said. It finally terminated the task, buried all the bass and sent 50 preserved specimens to the Department of Fisheries, the organization said.
Pension stated that it would work with government agencies to assist.
” We aim to remove about 2 million tons of the seafood from the program as quickly as possible, while we will likewise help 200, 000 monster fish to help reduce the blackchin tilapia”, said Prasit Boondoungprasert, president of the CPF’s executive committee.
” I make it clear that the CPF did not cause the epidemic.”
He called for a spacecraft into 11 firms that exported 300, 000 blackchin fish to 17 nations from 2013 to 2016 to identify their nature.
The United States plans to expand a Cold War-era rule to stop China from obtaining restricted chip-making tools and high-end chips from places including Israel, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan.
The Biden administration is set to expand the coverage of its Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR), which was first introduced in 1959 to control the trading of US technologies, by the end of this month, Reuters reported on Wednesday (July 31).
However, the United States’ allies, including Japan, the Netherlands and South Korea, all key producers and suppliers of chip-manufacturing tools, will not be affected by the change, the same report said.
The Biden administration may also use the FDPR to stop China from getting high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips made by SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics and equipment capable of making those chips, Bloomberg reported, citing named sources.
The report said the new FDPR, if enacted, would block the shipment of the HBM2 and more advanced chips including the HBM3 and HBM3E, all of which can be used as artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators.
It said US-based Micron Technology also produces HBM chips but it will not be affected by the new rule as the company has refrained from selling its HBM products to China after its memory chips were banned from being used in the country’s critical infrastructure in 2023.
“Containing and going after China will not stop China’s development, but will only make China even more determined and capable in boosting our own strength in technology and innovation,” Lin Jian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, said in a media briefing on Wednesday.
“We hope relevant countries will firmly resist the coercion and jointly uphold a fair and open international trade order to protect their own long-term interests,” he said.
Reuters also reported that the US plans to add about 120 entities to its restricted trade list. These entities include six chip foundries and their hardware and software suppliers.
In March this year, Bloomberg reported that Washington is considering blacklisting Hefei-based ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc (CXMT), which produces DRAM for use in computer servers and smart vehicles, as well as five other Chinese chip makers.
In June, Alan Estevez, chief of the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), visited the Netherlands and Japan to press their governments to put more limits on the China shipments of ASML and Tokyo Electron Ltd, respectively.
Chinese commentators have mixed views on the intensifying chip war between China and the US.
“The strengthening US curbs against China showed that the US is worried that it will lag behind China in technological development,” Chen Fei, an associate professor at the School of Politics and International Studies, Central China Normal University, says in an article published on Thursday.
Chen says many Chinese companies are quickly developing their own AI models and related supply chains and have already in certain areas surpassed the US. He asserts the US wants to use sanctions and export controls to slow the growth of China’s AI development but its plan won’t succeed.
Wen Yizhai, a Henan-based columnist, says in an article that China must increase its efforts to achieve self-sufficiency in high-end chips as import channels can be blocked one day if the international situation suddenly changes.
”Why does China still have to spend more than US$300 billion to import semiconductors every year? It is because Chinese chip makers can’t compete with global chip giants in terms of product quality and production scale,” he says.
“Although Chinese firms keep improving, it’s unlikely that they can achieve significant breakthroughs in the short term.”
He points out that Chinese memory chip makers, including Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC) and CXMT, only have a combined 5% market share domestically as the sector is dominated by South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix.
In the first five months of this year, China’s imports of integrated circuits grew 13.2% year-on-year to $148.4 billion while imports of chip-making equipment rose 64.4% to $18.2 billion, according to China Customs data.
During the period, Japan’s exports of chip-making equipment to China increased 21.5% to $10.55 billion, representing 58% of the total amount of tools imported by China.
South Korea’s exports of chips to China surged 46.5% to $44.8 billion, accounting for 30% of China’s total chip imports.
Sources told Reuters that the BIS wants to close a FDPR loophole by lowering the amount of US content that determines when foreign items are subject to US control.
Since 2019, the Netherlands has stopped issuing licenses for ASML to export its extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography tools to China.
At the beginning of this year, the country also banned the export of two immersion deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, known as the NXT:2050i and NXT:2100i, to China.
In July 2023, Japan added 23 items of chip-making tools and materials to its export control list.
Due to these restrictions, Chinese foundries can only produce chips up to 7 nanometers, not the smaller ones used in more advanced applications.
The US also banned the exports of certain high-end AI chips, including Nvidia’s A100 chips, to China in two packages announced in October 2022 and 2023.
Media reports said Chinese chip makers are seeking to set up fabs in Singapore and Malaysia so they can use immersion DUV or even EUV lithography machines there. Some American chip makers also plan to make chips in Southeast Asia and sell them to China.
Now Washington is drafting a new chip export control package that could undercut those plans. With the FDPR, the BIS can regulate the re-export and transfer of foreign-made items if their production involves certain American technology, software or equipment.
The BIS can strengthen the FDPR by defining certain technology, software and equipment as subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). For some years, the BIS has been using the FDPR to stop Chinese tech giant Huawei from obtaining high-end chips overseas.
Read: US targets Hong Kong chip transshipments to Russia
Follow Jeff Pao on X: @jeffpao3
Supriya Rao Patwardhan is executive vice president at DHL, one of the world’s most recognisable logistics companies offering express delivery, freight transport, e-commerce solutions and other supply chain solutions.
Leading a team of 5,800 information technology (IT) professionals from 87 different countries, her team provides the technology behind the company’s speed and reliability.
It wasn’t an easy road to get there. Born in India, Patwardhan experienced the motherhood penalty, struggled with childcare support, overcame racism and discrimination when first starting her career in Singapore, and weathered a major company setback and massive layoffs at DHL in the noughties.
A grandmother today, the first-generation Singaporean, who became a citizen 24 years ago, tells CNA Women about the numerous glass ceilings she has had to break, and shares her best career and leadership insights for career women and mothers.
1. TO NURTURE MORE WOMEN LEADERS, WE FIRST NEED TO SUPPORT MOTHERS
Women make up less than one-third of senior leaders, according to a 2024 World Economic Forum report. Patwardhan believes that one big reason for this is because many drop out of the workforce after becoming mothers, especially if they do not have adequate support.
As a young mother based in New Delhi, India, in 1989, Patwardhan remembers hitting her first career roadblock because she could not find childcare. Then an IT consultant, she settled for part-time work.
“It was the hardest thing because the career I had built up pretty much went down the drain. And I could see all my peers moving ahead,” she recalled.
Three decades later, Patwardhan’s daughter, her only child, faced a similar struggle after giving birth to her firstborn in 2020. This was during the pandemic and London, where her daughter is based, was in lockdown.
For its survey, Cohesity polled 302 IT and security executives in Singapore between late June and early July, with most hailing from sectors like IT, telecommunications, manufacturing, healthcare and financial services.
Of the 64 per cent who paid ransoms, almost half – 47 per cent – coughed up between US$100,000 and US$499,999.
Nearly all respondents believed the threat of cyberattacks on their industry would increase or had already increased this year.
A significant majority – 80 per cent – said their company would pay a ransom to recover data and restore business processes.
Almost 60 per cent said their company would be willing to pay over US$1 million in ransom, with 16 per cent saying they would shell out over US$5 million.
In April, Singaporean law firm Shook Lin & Bok was hit by a ransomware attack and paid US$1.4 million in Bitcoin to the Akira ransomware group. The attackers’ initial demand of US$2 million was negotiated down after a week.
In the Cohesity survey, 71 per cent of respondents said their companies actually had “do not pay” policies. For 64 per cent to pay up despite such guidelines is a “major concern”, said Cohesity’s global cyber resilience strategist James Blake.
Asked to respond to the survey, CSA said cybersecurity firms like Cohesity regularly produce such reports “based on their own intel and research for their various stakeholders”.
“We note that they are, in their own ways, providing insights into the multitude of cyber threats out there in cyberspace,” said the agency. “However, as this is an independent investigation report by a commercial entity, we have no comment on its contents.”
CSA however told CNA it “strongly discourages ransom payments”.
“With ransomware attacks rising globally, it is vital for organisations to take steps to better protect their systems and data from attacks,” it added, noting that measures in this space have been introduced over the years.
Social Security Office setting up permanent unit specifically to go after defaulters
PUBLISHED : 1 Aug 2024 at 18:29
The Social Security Office (SSO) is planning to go after employers who have failed to pay their portions of the mandatory contribution to the Social Security Fund.
However, the office admits it has no available estimate of how many companies have not paid their contributions and how much is in arrears.
It expects to spend up to a month compiling the figures, according to Boonsong Thapchaiyuth, secretary-general of the SSO.
The office has now decided to establish a permanent unit specifically to chase after defaulters, he said.
“The unit will lay out an action plan and spell out a timeline for tackling the outstanding contribution issue,” Mr Boonsong said.
The recouped payments will come in handy for improving Social Security Fund (SSF) services in terms of medical treatments and allowances for the disabled, those on maternity leave, children and funerals of fund recipients.
Under the social security system, both employees and employers are required to pay monthly contributions to the fund. Employers are responsible for deducting employees’ contributions and sending the money along with their own portions to the SSF.
Anecdotal evidence has indicated that many employers stopped making contributions during the Covid-19 pandemic because they were facing severe financial problems.
Mr Boonsong warned employers to sort out their contributions and promptly settle overdue payments.
The SSO is working to build a database to paint an overall picture of the overdue contribution problem. Once the database is up and running, the issue will be dealt with systematically and the office will be able to effectively map out ways to recover the money, according to Mr Boonsong.
He insisted that despite the absence of employers’ contributions, their respective employees will not lose their welfare benefits under the fund since the office has covered the shortfall.
Niyada Seneemanomai, a spokeswoman for the SSO, said some companies have deducted their workers’ pay but neglected or refused to pass the employees’ contributions on to the SSO.
This has caused workers to file complaints with the office. If it could be verified that the lack of contribution was the employer’s fault, the employees’ social security benefits would be unaffected.
Employers who fail to send the employees’ contributions to the SSO in time will face a fine accounting for 2% of outstanding contributions.
For some Americans, the relevant question isn’t “Which candidate will stand up to China?”, it’s “Should the US stand up to China at all?”
There are still some progressives who believe that the negative turn in relations between the two countries is America’s doing, and that if we chose, we could simply stop “saber-rattling” and “warmongering” and return everything to the world of 2012.
And there are some on the right who think the US should abandon Asia to Chinese hegemony, retreat behind our oceans and focus on culture wars at home – basically the same approach they take toward Russia and Ukraine.
Both of these groups are wrong. It is important for the US to stand up to China, not just because of what they’re trying to do to the US right now — force us to deindustrialize, sow division in our body politic, control our speech from afar and so on — but what else they’ll do to the US if it sits back and lets them win Cold War 2.
Knowing that the US is a dangerous potential rival, China’s current leadership would do everything possible to weaken that rival. “Engagement” didn’t make the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pro-America before 2016 and it would be even less successful now. Some day the US and China will be friends again, but for right now, what’s needed is a balance of power.
Most Americans, fortunately, probably realize this at an intuitive level. Opinions of China are strongly negative across all demographic groups – conservatives and liberals, old and young.
An overwhelming majority of Americans say that limiting China’s power and influence should be a priority for the US government:
Joe Biden and his administration have been very tough on China — tougher even than Donald Trump was in his first term.
Under Biden, the US didn’t yet manage to resuscitate its defense-industrial base, but it strengthened its cooperation with Asian allies, increased military aid and arms sales to Taiwan, built new bases in the Philippines, encouraged American companies to relocate out of China, unleashed highly effective export controls on China’s chip industry, began to build up its domestic manufacturing industries and acted swiftly to block a tide of Chinese exports from swamping US industry.
When I ask whether the next President will “stand up to China”, I’m basically asking whether they’ll improve upon — or at least continue — these policies. Unfortunately, there’s absolutely no guarantee this will happen. When it comes to China policy, there are reasons to worry about both candidates, but in my estimation, Trump is the much bigger worry.
For Trump, the big danger is that he won’t have anything to prove.
Remember the phrase “Only Nixon could go to China”? When Richard Nixon opened relations with Mao’s China in the early 1970s, he was able to do so because his unimpeachable credentials as an anti-communist gave him the political credibility to make overtures to a communist regime without being seen as an anti-American sellout.
The perception of Nixon as a hawk allowed him to be a dove in substance. Similarly, the public perception is that Trump is the ultimate China hawk. In fact, he did plenty to earn this perception in his first term.
He tossed out the old policy of “engagement” and started a trade war. He implemented some export controls, made an attempt to root out Chinese espionage, tried to ban TikTok, and blamed China for Covid. This earned Trump a huge amount of cred as a guy who would stand up to China.
But precisely because he has this cred, Trump might be able to pull a 180 in his second term with few political consequences. If he drops export controls, withdraws support for Taiwan, snubs Asian allies, nullifies the TikTok divestment effort and fails to reinforce America’s military posture in Asia, it’s possible that the American people will still think he’s a China hawk, because…well, just because he’s Trump. In ten years, we might find ourselves coining the expression “Only Trump could sell out to China.”
With Harris, the danger is that she’ll view her administration not as continuous with Biden’s but as picking up where Barack Obama left off. Obama was a good president in general but on China he fumbled the ball. His “pivot to Asia” was largely rhetorical, and he clung to the hope that “engagement” – i.e., letting China do all the world’s manufacturing – would cause the country to liberalize.
That attitude was already dangerously complacent in the early 2010s, and to bring it back now would be madness. But it’s possible that Harris might not realize this. So that’s the basic shape of my concern. Let’s get a little more specific about what could go wrong.
In the book “Wireless Wars”, Jonathan Pelson tells the story of a British man named John Suffolk. Suffolk had been the United Kingdom’s chief information officer, during which time he had warned the country about the security risks posed by Huawei.
He was then hired by Huawei as a “global cybersecurity officer”, after which he pulled a complete 180 and became the company’s staunchest advocate. It’s a chilling lesson in how deep China’s pockets are and how easy it has been able to buy many of its critics.
Although his followers don’t like to admit it, Trump has a tendency to support anyone who gives him a big bag of cash. This was painfully evident back in March, when Trump executed an abrupt flip-flop of his position on TikTok divestment. The reversal came immediately after a billionaire named Jeff Yass, who owns a large share in TikTok, met with Trump and promised him large campaign contributions. Here’s what I wrote at the time:
And then, suddenly, the Chinese company found a savior. That savior’s name was Donald Trump. In a stunning reversal, Trump came out swinging against a TikTok ban:
Donald Trump appeared to come out in defense of TikTok, the social media platform facing a potential ban by Congress, in a post late Thursday on his social media platform Truth Social — the same platform that experienced a widespread outage as the former president attempted to live-tweet President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech.
“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!” Trump wrote on Thursday night.
Pretty soon, MAGA faithful like Vivek Ramaswamy were lining up to agree with Trump.
Observers quickly came up with a theory for why Trump flip-flopped. Trump recently had a very cordial meeting with the billionaire Jeff Yass, who has a US$33 billion stake (yes, you read that right) in the Chinese-owned company:
One American who does not [want to force TikTok to sell] is Jeff Yass, a conservative hedge-fund manager who has a $33 billion stake in TikTok and has reportedly threatened to cut off funding to Republicans who support the divestment bill.
Last week, Yass visited Mar-a-Lago, where Trump praised him as “fantastic,” and media reports touted that Yass could potentially contribute generously to Trump’s campaign.
Trump badly needs money; his campaign is hurting for funds and he’s in legal trouble as well. Given that, plus his record of corruption, it’s absolutely plausible that he’d sell out to an ally of the Chinese Communist Party for a few bucks.
The theory is bolstered by the fact that former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway is being paid by the Club for Growth to advance ByteDance’s interests on Capitol Hill; Jeff Yass is the Club’s biggest donor.
So there’s the obvious danger that this could just happen again and again. China’s government has deeper pockets than any billionaire or any corporation, or…well, anyone. If Trump sells America out to the highest bidder, that highest bidder is going to be China.
During his first term, Trump put tariffs on Chinese goods and put export controls on Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE. But he then partially backtracked on both of those efforts after empty promises and relatively minor pressure from China.
In 2020, Trump agreed to stop raising tariffs on China in exchange for China purchasing US agricultural goods — the so-called “phase one agreement.” Trump kept his part of the bargain and claimed it as a huge victory for “Making America Great Again.” But China simply lied and bought almost nothing from the US:
President Donald Trump signed what he called a “historical trade deal” with China that committed China to purchase $200 billion of additional US exports before December 31, 2021. Today the only undisputed “historical” aspect of that agreement is its failure…
The phase one agreement committed China to increase its purchases of certain US goods and services in 2020 and 2021 by at least $200 billion over 2017 levels…China agreed to buy at least $227.9 billion of US exports in 2020 and $274.5 billion in 2021, for a total of $502.4 billion over the two years.
Ultimately…China ended up buying none of that extra $200 billion of US exports it had promised to purchase. Art of the deal, indeed.
Trump also relented on export controls on ZTE. Congress tried to intervene to save the export controls, but failed. Here’s what former GOP Congressman Adam Kinzinger had to say about that:
So much of Trump’s first-term record isn’t actually that tough on China – it’s one of initially tough policies followed by capitulation. Between that and the TikTok flip-flop, it’s not clear why we should expect a second term to be different.
The biggest flashpoint for US-China relations is Taiwan. A Chinese invasion of the island would severely compromise the security of US allies (most importantly Japan), cut off much of US chip supplies, and probably signal the beginning of a more general Chinese domination of Asia.
Biden inched the US away from its traditional posture of “strategic ambiguity” with repeated promises to aid Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. Whether that was the right move, or whether strategic ambiguity should be preserved in its traditional form, is a hotly debated matter in the national security community.
But one thing I haven’t seen any foreign policy experts suggest is that the US should publicly suggest abandoning Taiwan. Yet this is exactly what Trump seems to have done in a series of recent statements. Most recently, he did an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek in which he bashed Taiwan for its success in chip manufacturing, and appeared to argue that the island is indefensible:
Asked about America’s commitment to defending Taiwan from China, which views the Asian democracy as a breakaway province, Trump makes it clear that, despite recent bipartisan support for Taiwan, he’s at best lukewarm about standing up to Chinese aggression. Part of his skepticism is grounded in economic resentment. “Taiwan took our chip business from us,” he says. “I mean, how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They’re immensely wealthy.” What he wants is for Taiwan to pay the US for protection. “I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy. Why? Why are we doing this?” he asks.
Another factor driving his skepticism is what he regards as the practical difficulty of defending a small island on the other side of the globe. “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away,” he says. “It’s 68 miles away from China.” Abandoning the commitment to Taiwan would represent a dramatic shift in US foreign policy—as significant as halting support for Ukraine. But Trump sounds ready to radically alter the terms of these relationships.
He also bashed Nancy Pelosi for visiting Taiwan.
Trump’s words on Taiwan have alarmed some of his fellow Republicans, and rightly so. But if Trump does abandon Taiwan, the party leadership will likely go right along with him. Already, the GOP platform has scrubbed any mention of Taiwan, for the first time in over 40 years:
For the first time since 1980, Taiwan didn’t rate a mention in the Republican National Committee’s party platform released this week. Compare that with the platform in 2016 (the GOP didn’t produce one in 2020) that described the island as a “loyal friend” and pledged to “help Taiwan defend itself.” The RNC’s exclusion of Taiwan in the platform came despite intensive outreach by Taiwan’s diplomatic outpost in Washington, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, to persuade GOP allies to get Taiwan into the platform, two people familiar with that effort told China Watcher…The RNC didn’t respond to requests for comment.
It doesn’t exactly take a foreign policy genius here to see that Trump and at least some of his people are strongly considering giving Taiwan the Ukraine treatment. That signals weakness to China’s leadership and could even invite a war that otherwise would have been deterred.
As a possible bright spot, Trump’s vice presidential nominee JD Vance has expressed strong support for defending Taiwan, and Trump’s former national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien is a staunch advocate of “peace through strength.” But it’s not clear how much influence these folks would have over Trump on the Taiwan question.
Personally, I don’t put much stock in Trump’s tendency to say nice things about Xi Jinping. He did that all throughout his first term, even while moving US policy in a more anti-China direction, so I think this rhetoric is a red herring.
Much more worrying is the evidence that Trump’s political base — or at least the online part of it — is shifting toward a pro-China stance. Twitter user and former Noahpinion guest blogger Pourteaux has a long-running thread keeping track of anti-anti-China statements from MAGA figures and online rightists. A couple of examples:
Part of this is just isolationism. But part of it comes from the idea that MAGA’s true enemy is American liberals, and that in order to fight this enemy, foreign dictators like Putin and Xi Jinping should be viewed as allies — a sort of global alliance of autocracy. Tucker certainly seems to subscribe to this idea, but Trump himself and some of his allies — even ones like Mike Pompeo who were tough on China during Trump’s first term — have said similar things:
If Trump decides that appeasement of China, even at the cost of Taiwan and Chinese economic supremacy, is necessary in order to focus on fighting Trump’s internal enemies, we’re all in a whole lot of trouble. A whole lot of commentators are now starting to get worried, but with Trump a clear favorite in the prediction markets and election forecasts, it might be too little too late.
I’m much less worried about Kamala Harris than I am about Donald Trump when it comes to China policy. Unlike Trump, Harris generally seems like someone who tends to continue her predecessors’ policies. Jordan Schneider of ChinaTalk has a good thread in which he argues that Kamala’s China policy would be similar to Biden’s. Some excerpts:
And for what it’s worth, Chinese nationalists seem to prefer Trump over Harris.
But although this is good, it doesn’t fully reassure me yet. For one thing, although Biden enacted tariffs on China that were even higher than Trump’s, Harris consistently slammed tariffs and protectionism back when she was running for President in 2019 and 2020.
She seems amenable to the idea of restricting free trade in the name of labor rights and environmental concerns, but unlike doesn’t seem to see tariffs as a tool of national security — a way of preserving defense-related manufacturing capacity against the possibility of a conflict with China.
Also, Harris’ national security adviser, Philip H Gordon, argued during Trump’s first term that engagement with China was a wise policy and that many elements of it should be brought back:
It is true that abandoning Cold War confrontation in favor of a more constructive relationship in the early 1970s did not lead to domestic political reform [in China] as some optimists had hoped. But…It was a nuanced, bipartisan China strategy that paid off in many ways…The establishment of diplomatic relations hardly made it an ally of the United States or erased the profound differences between the two counties, but the benefits of not having China as an enemy have now endured for so long that they are largely taken for granted. If [Mike] Pompeo’s rhetorical assault stokes the fire of Chinese nationalism and leads to unrestrained military and political competition, as looks increasingly likely, the benefits of engagement will once again become apparent.
Even in economic terms, Pompeo’s suggestion that the American people have nothing to show for 50 years of engagement with China is…at odds with the facts…[T]he notion that trade with China has been a one-way street overlooks the benefits that two generations of Americans have reaped from importing affordable consumer goods, low-cost inputs for high-end manufacturing exports, and growing U.S. export surpluses in services and agricultural products…[T]he idea that U.S. consumers or exporters would benefit from cutting off trade with China even further is deeply misguided. The response to problematic Chinese trade practices is to join forces with U.S. allies in Asia and Europe to address them, not to pursue a failed tariff war or the fantasy of “decoupling” the two economies in ways that would hurt American workers, farmers, and consumers.
I don’t know if Gordon still thinks this, or if what he thinks is representative of what Harris would think as president. But it’s very worrying rhetoric, considering that it goes directly against the Biden administration’s whole approach to China.
Nowhere does Gordon acknowledge the military importance of preserving US manufacturing capacity – something that Biden’s own national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, understands very well. Nor does Gordon acknowledge that China itself has been striving to decouple from the US all on its own, and has been making great strides in this regard, threatening to turn a two-way economic dependency into a one-way dependency.
Nor does Gordon seem to realize that despite America’s best efforts to court China as a partner, overthrowing US hegemony and degrading US power is at the centerpiece of Xi Jinping’s foreign policy approach.
In other words, there is at least the possibility that Harris might think we’re still living in the pre-Xi world of 2012, and might view Biden’s attempts to stand up to China as an unnecessary continuation of Trumpist aggression rather than as a crucial but inadequate step toward shoring up global security. I don’t know how strong this possibility is, but until we hear more from Harris on the topic, I will continue to worry.
That all having been said, my worries about Trump on this front are still much greater.
US national interests are best served by a peaceful world where authoritarian powers don’t try to conquer their smaller, weaker neighbors, and where global trade is conducted for mutual benefit instead of as a form of mercantilist beggar-thy-neighbor competition.
That goal requires that the US recognize China’s movement away from peaceful economic development and toward assertive nationalism and totalitarianism under Xi Jinping.
And it requires strong steps on the economic, diplomatic, and military fronts to dissuade China from launching a reckless war that plunges Asia into violence and chaos.
I hope that whoever gets elected President this year is up to that task. Right now I’d definitely pick Harris over Trump for this reason alone, but that doesn’t mean she has my full confidence either.
This article was first published on Noah Smith’s Noahpinion Substack and is republished with kind permission. Read the original here and become a Noahopinion subscriber here.
Uber have announced a deal which aims to bring 100,000 electric vehicles (EV) made by China’s BYD to the ride-hailing giant’s global fleet of cars.
The two companies say they will offer drivers incentives to switch to electric cars, including discounts on maintenance, charging, financing and leasing.
The multi-year agreement will be rolled out first in Europe and Latin America, before being made available in the Middle East, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The announcement comes as EV sales around the world have slowed and Chinese car makers face higher import charges in places like the US and the European Union.
“The companies aim to bring down the total cost of EV ownership for Uber drivers, accelerating the uptake of EVs on the Uber platform globally, and introducing millions of riders to greener rides,” the two firms said in a statement.
They also said they will work to integrate BYD’s self-driving technologies into Uber’s platform.
Earlier this year, Uber said it was working with Tesla to promote EV adoption among its drivers in the US and planned to develop a purpose-built EV with South Korean car giant Kia.
The US, the European Union and other major markets have recently hiked tariffs on China-made EVs in moves aimed at protecting their car industries.
The move has prompted BYD and other Chinese EV makers to expand their production facilities outside China.
In July, BYD agreed a $1bn (£780m) deal to set up a manufacturing plant in Turkey.
The new plant will be able to produce up to 150,000 vehicles a year, according to Turkish state news agency Anadolu.
The facility is expected to create around 5,000 jobs and start production by the end of 2026.
Also last month, BYD opened an EV plant in Thailand – its first factory in South East Asia.
BYD said the plant will have an annual capacity of 150,000 vehicles and is projected to generate 10,000 jobs.
At the end of last year, BYD announced it would build a manufacturing plant in EU member state Hungary.
It will be the firm’s first passenger car factory in Europe and is expected to create thousands of jobs.
The company has also said it is planning to build a manufacturing plant in Mexico.
BYD, which is backed by veteran US investor Warren Buffett, is the world’s second-largest EV company after Elon Musk’s Tesla.