Confidence In Democratic Leadership Sinks To Record Low As Party Implodes
The Democratic Party remains rudderless following last November’s election setbacks, when Republicans regained control of both the White House and the Senate, while narrowly holding onto their House majority. Now, a new poll shows confidence in the Democratic Party’s congressional leadership has collapsed, sinking to record lows.
Gallup conducted a new poll in the first half of April, finding that Americans’ confidence in Democratic congressional leadership has plummeted to an abysmal 25%—about nine points below the previous low of 34% recorded in 2023.
“Democratic leadership’s latest 25% confidence rating is an all-time low for the group — well below the previous 34% low recorded in 2023 and the average of 45% since 2001,” Gallup wrote in a report, adding, “Confidence ratings were last at the majority level in 2009 for Democratic congressional leaders and in 2003 for Republican congressional leaders.”
The stunning collapse in public trust toward congressional Dems comes as no surprise given socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been flying around the country in private jets to “Fight Oligarchy,” and Maryland’s far-left Senator Chris Van Hollen wasted taxpayer funds on a trip to meet with an MS-13 gangster (FTO designation) at an El Salvadorian resort.
The latest mainstream media interviews with political strategist James Carville and Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg reveal that the rudderless party is experiencing growing infighting.
🔥HOGG vs. CARVILLE feud heats up: Hogg tears into Carville for calling him “a contemptible little twerp.”
“James Carville has not won an election since before I was born. These are the same ones that had $2 billion to win an election and still lost.”
Meanwhile, Americans are increasingly fed up with Democrats and their network of billionaire-funded dark money NGOs staging “Tesla Takedown” protests. At the same time, far-left activists have launched domestic terror attacks targeting Tesla showrooms, Supercharger stations, and vehicles.
Firebombing Teslas, vandalizing personal vehicles, and shooting up Tesla dealerships over politics IS terrorism.
Some good news: with the USAID money spigot shut off from funding the Democratic Party’s color revolutions against Trump and Musk, the era of rent-a-riots and million-person marches appears to be over—at least for now.
What an epic mess the Democratic Party has become—rife with hate, violence, and a relentless push of anti-American propaganda.
Americans want peace and prosperity—the era of Democrats waging 15 years of hybrid warfare through color revolutions and manufactured chaos has come to an abrupt end.
This raises a very important question: Where does the Democratic Party’s allegiance truly lie? Is it with America First—or somewhere else entirely?
You likely already know from reading Racket that the Biden administration was very active in targeting misinformation and disinformation, even as it engaged in those practices.
But the number of grants? We didn’t know that. Now we do.
The Free Press reports that since 2017, the federal government has awarded about 800 grants to counter mis/disinformation — and the Biden administration is responsible for more than 600 of them. The 800 grants amount to more than $1.4 billion.
The findings by reporters Gabe Kaminsky and Madeleine Rowley are based on a new database of anti-mis/disinformation programs. The database was created by the free speech advocacy group liber-net.
“A large number of these projects cynically employed the ‘misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation’ framework to counter their political adversaries, with U.S. government funding making it possible,” liber-net’s director, Andrew Lowenthal, told the Free Press.
President Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office that accused the Biden administration of violating free speech rights “under the guise” of combatting misinformation, disinformation and malinformation.
But Kaminsky and Rowley found that several of the programs were continuing under the Trump administration — at least until they started asking about the grants, as Kaminsky explains to Racket.
We reached out to agencies to understand if these programs would continue under President Trump. What we found was a groundswell of federal officials taking the information and letting us know that they were either terminating the programs, investigating them, or adjusting internal policies as to how they characterize some of these programs to ensure alignment with the President’s executive order on “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship” that he signed on his first day in office. Some agencies, however, didn’t respond, or, in the case of the National Science Foundation, declined to comment.
In one example the Free Press cites, NIH director Jay Bhattacharya sent an email marked “URGENT” to employees to investigate grants and contracts related to “fighting misinformation or disinformation.”
The Free Press found several dozen grants that have since been canceled, such as $683,000 awarded to UC-Irvine in December. The money would have gone toward studying the influence of social media and “misinformation on vaccine acceptance among black and Latinx individuals.” The study would have done that by enrolling 500 people who follow vaccine-hesitant influencers on X.
Although most mis/disinformation grants occurred under Biden, they started with some regularity during the first Trump administration. Here’s a graphic from liber-net that shows how the number of grants ballooned from Trump to Biden:
The organizations that receive grants typically dole out portions of the money to other organizations. Kaminsky explains how they work:
Gabe Kaminsky: Like many federal programs, there are often subgrantees or subcontractors. So, while Maddie Rowley and I found that the Biden administration had awarded north of 600 grants and contracts to outside organizations, that number only accounts for primary awards. Take the $2 million that the Department of State awarded in 2023 to the Vermont-based NGO World Learning to, in its telling, “support the Armenian media sector’s overall resilience to disinformation.” For that program, which ended in February 2025, World Learning dished out a sub-award of $275,219, or 13% of the primary award, to the Poynter Institute.
And for Poynter, that’s nothing new. For example, I reported last year that Poynter had received a sub-award from the State Department’s since-shuttered Global Engagement Center—which Republicans accused of censoring conservatives in the United States. Poynter received the GEC funding via the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a London-based entity.
Greg Collard: Although most grants were during the Biden administration, they were also awarded during the first Trump administration. Was there a difference in the types of grants that were awarded?
GK: Post-2017 is really when these programs were kicked into gear, speeding up dramatically under Biden. The same grantees and contractors that ended up receiving large amounts in funding under Biden often had initially received some during the first Trump administration. As to why that was is I think a mix of Republicans being in the dark as to the programs, and—as was evident broadly across the first Trump administration—there being agencies that sort of operated how they desired irrespective of Trump’s stated policies. Trump did not know how Washington worked.
However, I would say that the descriptions of programs on federal documents under Biden was a notable difference—as some appeared to more specifically align with the ideological priorities of the Democrats: using terms like “racial equity,” “Latinx,” or other left-leaning terminology championed by the Biden administration. Under Trump 1.0, in other words, the anti-misinformation circus quietly gained a foothold in the U.S. by advertising itself in broad strokes that, in theory, many might agree with: countering extremism or online harassment, for example.
But in practice, the programs were far more complicated and often partisan.
Active Grants
Although many anti mis/disinformation programs have been shut down, many remain active — including the largest grant: a $979 million award to military contractor Peraton, courtesy of the Department of Defense. Peraton landed the grant in 2021 to help the U.S. Central Command “counter misinformation,” liber-net’s Lowenthal writes in a Substack post about the database.
That grant alone easily makes the Defense Department the largest funder of mis-disinformation grants from 2016 to 2024. USAID was the second-largest funder at $149 million.
Smaller grants also remain active. One the Free Press cites is $6.8 million in multiple grants to the University of Washington for literary resources that help “rural communities and black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities” identify misinformation. The grant description says misinformation is a “growing threat to American democracy,” and that “Solutions must not only provide the public with skills for determining the truthfulness of claims, but must also provide resources for addressing the social and emotional impacts of misinformation.”
LA County Quality Of Life Index Stuck At A 10-Year Low; New Survey Finds
Los Angeles County residents have plenty to worry about amid a wildfire recovery effort, federal immigration crackdowns, and persistent homelessness, but what most concerns them is the cost of living, according to an annual UCLA survey released on April 16.
The 10th Annual Quality of Life Index (QLI) survey polled 1,400 county residents between Feb. 23 and March 9, and found widespread frustration with the high cost of living, including increasing prices of groceries and household items.
The survey, conducted by UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, found that concern over the high cost of living has kept the QLI at a lowly 53, the same as last year.
That number represents the lowest level in the survey’s history. In 2016, the QLI came in at 59.
“Meanwhile, the salience of [the cost of living category] has risen to its highest-ever point in this index, and is joined by a growing concern about jobs and the economy,” said the survey, which was prepared by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates (FM3 Research).
“The combination represents fundamental bread-and-butter issues that are the biggest explainers of the longer-term lukewarm attitudes toward life in Los Angeles County.”
An additional 23 percent, including those who live relatively far from the burn areas, such as the northern part of the county and the South Bay, claimed to know someone affected. Meanwhile, 14 percent of respondents said they lost significant income due to the fires, while another 13 percent said they incurred a nonsignificant loss.
More than half of respondents said they wore a mask to avoid smoke, volunteered or donated to help victims, and feared having to evacuate.
“While the percentage of residents who lost income is lower than the percentages of those who experienced other impacts, it still represents millions of Angelenos,” said the survey, which found that Latinos, younger residents, lower income earners, and those working part-time jobs were disproportionately affected.
Eighty-nine percent of county residents agree that homeowners who lost their property in the fires should be permitted to rebuild at the same locations. In 2019, when residents were asked the same question in the wake of the Woolsey Fire near Simi Valley, 76 percent agreed.
“Both numbers are high, but suggest that the geographic breadth of the [January] fires, the extent of the destruction and the collateral impacts they had on a wide swath of the county significantly influenced this year’s results,” the survey said.
The Palisades and Eaton fires this year destroyed more than 16,000 structures; the Woolsey fire destroyed 1,600, according to the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Fifty-two percent of county residents said they would generally be OK with increased taxes for improved wildfire response. Younger residents, Latinos, and Asians were most open to the proposal. Whites and African Americans were evenly split on the idea, which did not include specifics.
Attitudes toward the Los Angeles mayor were affected by the wildfires, the survey said.
For example, just 37 percent of respondents view Mayor Karen Bass favorably, with 49 percent viewing her unfavorably. That’s a reversal from 2024, when 42 percent viewed her favorably and 32 percent unfavorably.
“The wildfires that raged in Altadena and Pacific Palisades in January are the story of this year’s survey,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Luskin School’s Los Angeles Initiative.
“These catastrophic events have left devastating physical and psychological impacts in their wake,” said the former county supervisor.
“Although the primary victims are those who lost their lives, homes and possessions, millions of other Angelenos have been touched by these terrifying events in myriad ways. These impacts cross geographic, economic and racial lines that can only be described as a shared trauma across Los Angeles County.”
Cost of Living
The county’s high cost of living has become a major source of frustration for residents. Three-quarters of respondents chose it as the most important category affecting their quality of life. Among the subcategories, the cost of housing remains the leader, but the costs of groceries and household items rose in importance, as did taxes.
“The overall satisfaction score on our QLI index is stuck for one main reason—the impact of the high cost of living,” said Paul Maslin, a public opinion and polling expert with FM3 Research.
“Those concerns were the highest in terms of importance of any category we’ve measured in the last decade. And cost of living continues to be the lowest rating category in terms of satisfaction.”
Immigration and deportation
Forty-four percent of county residents fear that a member of their family or a friend could face deportation by federal authorities.
In 2017, 37 percent expressed such a fear at the start of Trump’s first administration.
Latinos are most likely to feel this way at 54 percent. By age group, residents aged 18-29 and 30-39 are the most likely to fear a member of their family or friend could be deported at 57 percent and 52 percent, respectively. They are also most likely to believe that the city and county governments should not cooperate with the federal government’s current deportation policies.
“The new administration in Washington has once again brought the question of immigration and deportation to the fore,” Yaroslavsky said.
“This is very much an issue that is front and center on the minds of a large part of our county’s population.”
Homelessness
Homelessness remains at or near the top of concerns for residents, though for the first time in a while, the portion who believe the homelessness problems are worsening has declined by 8 percentage points. In 2024, 60 percent thought the problem was growing worse. In the 2025 survey, 52 percent thought so. Yet only 10 percent believe the situation is getting better. That number was the same in 2024.
The deflation of asset bubbles and higher costs are foreseeable, but the magnitude of each is unpredictable.
With the rise of financialized asset bubbles as the source of our “growth,” family home went from shelter to speculative asset. This transition accelerated as financialization (turning everything into a financial commodity to be leveraged and sold globally for a quick profit) spread into the once-staid housing sector in the early 2000s. (See chart of housing bubbles #1 and #2 below).
Where buying a home once meant putting down roots and insuring a stable cost of shelter, housing became a speculative asset to be snapped up and sold as prices soared.
The short-term vacation rental (STVR) boom added fuel to the speculative fire over the past decade as huge profits could be generated by assembling an STVR mini-empire of single-family homes that were now rented to tourists.
Now that housing has become unaffordable to the majority and the costs of ownership are stair-stepping higher, housing has become a liability. I covered the increases in costs of ownership in The Cost of Owning a Home Is Soaring 11/11/24). Articles like this one are increasingly common:
The sums of money now required to own, insure and maintain a house are eye-watering. Annual home insurance for many is now a five-figure sum; property taxes in many states is also a five-figure sum. As for maintenance, as I discussed in This Nails It: The Doom Loop of Housing Construction Quality, the decline in quality of housing and the rising costs of repair make buying a house a potentially unaffordable venture should repairs costing tens of thousands of dollars become necessary.
Major repairs can now cost what previous generations paid for an entire house, and no, this isn’t just inflation; it’s the result of the decline of quality across the board and the gutting of labor skills to cut costs.
Here’s the Case-Shiller Index of national housing prices. Housing Bubble #2 far exceeds the extremes of unaffordability reached in Housing Bubble #1:
Here’s a snapshot of housing affordability: buying a house is now an unattainable luxury for those without top 20% incomes and help from parents.
The monthly payments as a percentage of income are at historic highs:
Property taxes are rising in many locales as valuations bubble higher and local governments seek sources of stable revenues:
Home insurance costs vary widely, but all are skewing to the upside.
As I often note, the insurance industry is not a charity, and to maintain profits as payouts for losses explode higher, rates have to climb for everyone–and more for those in regions that are now viewed as high-risk due to massive losses in fires, hurricanes, wind storms, flooding, etc.
All credit-asset bubbles pop, and that inevitable deflation of home valuations will take away the speculative punchbowl. What’s left are the costs of ownership. As these rise, they offset the rich capital gains that home owners have been counting on for decades to make ownership a worthwhile, low-risk investment.
The deflation of asset bubbles and higher costs are foreseeable, but the magnitude of each is unpredictable. The ideas that have taken hold in the 21st century–that owning a house is a wellspring of future wealth, and everything is now a throwaway destined for the landfill–are based on faulty assumptions, assumptions that have set a banquet of consequences few will find palatable.
Americans Are Searching “USA Products” Like Never Before
Tariffs are designed to shift consumer demand toward domestically produced goods. As foreign products become increasingly expensive, driven by levies such as the Trump administration’s 145% effective tariff rate on Chinese imports, consumers are starting to take notice.
Faced with rising prices for foreign goods, some consumers have turned to the internet to determine which products are still made in the United States.
Google Trends data shows “What products are made in the USA?” reached record highs by mid-April, with data going all the way back to 2004.
These related search queries are in “breakout” territory:
With an effective tariff rate of 145% on all Chinese goods, Beijing signaled on Wednesday that it is open to trade talks in the near term. In the tit-for-tat tariff war, China has imposed 125% duties on U.S. goods.
In recent weeks, President Trump has paused reciprocal tariffs for countries that chose not to retaliate following “Liberation Day” in early April. The White House announced this week that the administration is in talks with 75 countries to secure new trade deals. Trump held discussions with Japan overnight, calling the talks “big progress.”
Even as trade deals are expected in the coming weeks and months, the broader objective of the tariff strategy is to reshore critical supply chains essential to national security and to position the United States for dominance in the 2030s. Early internet search trend signs suggest that the tariffs are already influencing consumer behavior – this is a great start.
I’d like to talk today about the role of China, the United States, and the European Union, or just Europe in general, in the context of these tariffs and the so-called trade wars.
Right now, President Donald Trump has given a 90-day reprieve from high tariffs. I think that 10% tariffs are still in existence. And they are negotiating with a number of European countries and particularly, Asian dynamic economies, such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. In addition to that, they are targeting China with tit-for-tat tariffs. And we are maybe on the brink—nobody wants it, but we might be on the brink of a trade war, which we’ve addressed in earlier videos.
But here’s my point.
What is the attitude of Europe?
Roughly, China has a $1 trillion deficit with the world. We have about a $1 trillion deficit in trade with the world. But here’s the ratios. About a third of our deficit is with China, which makes up a third of their surplus. In addition to that, Europe makes up about a third of their surplus.
So, China has called on Europe to join forces with it to prevent all of the retaliatory tariffs that the United States has threatened Europe, which has a $200 billion surplus with us, and China, which has a nearly high $300 billion, maybe even $400 billion, who knows?
It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it, that these illiberal apparatchiks in China would think that a Western democracy would want to join them against the United States?
I don’t think that’s gonna happen.
But the European Left is very angry at the Trump administration.
So, Choice One might be, “Well, we don’t like the Chinese and we are an ally of the Americans, who subsidize our defense, but we detest the Trump administration. So maybe, (wink and nod) we’ll either be quiet or hope China wins that trade war and the United States, under the Trump administration, backs off all tariffs.”
That would be a big mistake given their vulnerabilities they have with the United States vis-a-vis security.
The second attitude might be the Europeans will just say, “We’ll lay low. We won’t say much at all. We’ll kind of drag out our tariff negotiations with the Trump administration. And we’ll let the Chinese and the United States battle it out. And if Trump should win and he lowers the amount of trade with China, maybe that will be an opening for us to replace China as the United States chief importer.”
That is something that I don’t think will happen.
The third scenario is what I would suggest for the Europeans. They should say the following: “Despite our disagreements with the Trump administration, the United States is an ally. And we know that we have been as victimized by Chinese mercantilism, high tariffs, cheating on patents, copyrights, dumping, financial money manipulation—all the things the United States complains about, we do too. In fact, we as Europeans in a whole have about the same deficit with China as the United States does. So, we are kindred spirits. So, what we will do is, even though we have disagreements on our surplus with the United States and their efforts to reduce it, we will ally with the United States.”
And that would represent about two-thirds of China’s total trade action or monetary value. And especially, if Japan and our allies in South Korea, Taiwan would join, then China would find out that about 85% of its trade is in a block. That is, they are united. And they have common complaints against China. And China would not be able to say to the United States, “We’re going to cut deals with Vietnam and Japan and Taiwan and South Korea and the EU and leave you out in the cold.”
Instead, the Europeans and, to a lesser extent, the Asian powerhouses would join the United States and say, “You know what? We’ve been quiet. We’re afraid of China. They’re bullies. But now that you’ve stood up, we’re embolden ourselves to air the same complaints as you are and hope that you win. And maybe a byproduct of reduced trade with China from the United States will open a door. So, even though we might have to lower our tariffs, there will be more opportunity in the American market with a less prominent Chinese trade profile that we can then be welcomed in as a kindred ally.”
So, Europe has two or three choices in this proposed Chinese-American trade standoff. Nobody wants a trade war with anybody. No one wants it with China. But this is long overdue. And Europe has to decide what course they’re going to take. And for everybody’s sake, let’s hope they choose wisely.
Last year, a cocoa shortage drove up prices for European chocolate makers and consumers.
This was largely due to an exceptionally wet rainy season as well as a viral cocoa disease that severely impacted the 2023/2024 harvest in West Africa. However, the situation is expected to improve this year, according to industry experts.
In a note published at the end of February, the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) estimated that the 2024/2025 harvest is expected to show a surplus, after three consecutive years of deficit.
Nearly 65 percent of the world’s cocoa is harvested in just four West African countries: Côte d’Ivoire (38 percent), Ghana (12 percent), Nigeria (7 percent), and Cameroon (7 percent).
South America comes in a distant second place for volume, with Ecuador and Brazil as the main producing countries, accounting for 10 percent and 4 percent of global production, respectively.
The vast majority of the world’s cocoa is then exported to Europe and North America, where it is processed into chocolate and primarily consumed.
The Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium, for example, together import approximately 25 percent of the world’s cocoa beans. This makes the European Union the world’s largest importer of cocoa, accounting for 60 percent of global imports.
The United States and Canada, for their part, together import the equivalent of approximately seven percent of global production.
Germany has activated its first permanent foreign troop deployment since World War II, establishing a 5,000-strong armored brigade in Lithuania. This decision follows Defense Minister Boris Pistorius’ announcement in 2023 to bolster troop presence on NATO‘s eastern flank in response to the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War.
The deployment demonstrates Germany’s willingness to take a leading role in the conventional defense of Europe with Brig. Gen. Christoph Huber emphasizing, “We’re not only moving toward operational readiness; we’re taking responsibility.”
According to the Bundeswehr, the brigade will consist of three major combat units—including a mechanized infantry battalion, a tank battalion, and the multinational enhanced Foreign Presence Battle Group Lithuania—and will be complemented by combat and support elements. The brigade aims to be at full operating capability by 2027.
Addressing a NATO Vulnerability
The need for additional NATO forces in Lithuania is largely due to its geographical location between Russian-allied Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad, an isolated port city, was once part of Prussia and was ceded to the Soviet Union after World War II under the Potsdam Agreement. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the region was incorporated into the Russian Federation and now hosts the country’s Baltic Fleet, as well as troops, fighter jets, and nuclear-capable Iskander missiles.
The narrow corridor between Lithuania and Belarus, known as the Suwalki Gap, is widely regarded as NATO’s most vulnerable point. Should Russian forces launch an attack on Lithuania, Latvia, or Estonia, which are all NATO member states, they could potentially sever their supply lines from Poland by linking Belarus and Kaliningrad through an offensive. Stationing permanent NATO troops in the three Baltic states serves as a long-term security guarantee.
Germany’s New Policy of ‘Zeitenwende’
Due to its historical responsibility following World War II, Germany has traditionally maintained a cautious and restrained military stance. Massive defense cuts in the 1990s and 2000s further weakened its defense capabilities. In response to new geopolitical challenges, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz introduced in 2022 the Zeitenwende—a “turning point”—in German security policy. This new strategy aims to strengthen defense capabilities, increase military spending to meet NATO targets—which Germany achieved for the first time in 2024 by reaching the 2 percent mark—and enhance European security cooperation. The recent deployment to Lithuania serves as its flagship project.
Germany has made meaningful progress, and a clear shift in thinking within the German defense establishment is evident, particularly through initiatives like the creation of a special fund for defense spending to kick-start military investment.
Europe Needs to Step Up So US Can Shift Focus to Indo-Pacific
In times when European politicians express concerns that the U.S. is indifferent to Europe’s fate, it’s important to remember that the current administration is encouraging allies to step up and ensure they are able to deter potential dangers on their own terms. This is a task that all sovereign nations must undertake.
The United States needs to shift strategic focus to the Indo-Pacific to deter China, and steps like this one taken by Berlin are critical if Germany and other European NATO members are to take primary responsibility for their own conventional defense. Washington should applaud the new German base in Lithuania and encourage other wealthy Western European nations to follow suit with bases in Latvia and Estonia.
* * *
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
People and businesses across China are feeling the pressure as the Chinese authorities vow staunch resistance to the United States and the Trump administration’s tough approach to trade and bilateral relations.
Chinese companies, workers, and industry insiders have reported being caught in a bind by the escalating U.S. tariffs, as usual orders are not coming in, and some companies are being compelled to take extreme measures.
While Chinese social media is flooded with anti-U.S. propaganda and nationalist content, posts and videos warning of mass layoffs and prolonged “vacations” offer some indication of the unease spreading throughout an export-driven economy already struggling with high unemployment, shrinking profits, and declining foreign investment.
On April 11, U.S. President Donald Trump hiked the blanket tariff on most Chinese products to 145 percent in response to the Chinese regime slapping its own 125 percent retaliatory duty on American goods the same day.
In addition, Beijing on April 14 restricted the export of seven types of rare earth products critical for high-tech and military manufacturing in the United States and other countries.
According to a White House fact sheet published on April 15, some Chinese products may now face U.S. tariffs of up to 245 percent.
Trump has cited unfair trade practices and illegal drug trafficking as reasons for imposing the levies on Chinese goods.
Washington, particularly starting with the first Trump administration, has long called out the Chinese regime for decades of distortionary and protectionist economic policies, as well as rampant industrial espionage.
Trump also criticized Beijing for failing to curb the production and export of the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl, which often entered the United States through Mexico.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said in a December 2024 press release that more than 107,000 people died from drug overdose in 2023, with nearly 70 percent of those deaths linked to opioids such as fentanyl.
Chinese Companies Feel the Crunch
Li Meng-chü, a Taiwanese businessman, told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times that the heightened U.S. tariffs will force a significant number of export-oriented factories in China to scale back their businesses or close entirely.
The owner of a factory that makes flashlights in the city of Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, told The Epoch Times that while export companies used to place three or four bulk orders with the factory a month, business has completely dried up as of late. Many workers who used to work six days a week now take three or four days off.
Li, the Taiwanese businessman, said that to his knowledge, factories in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong that produce electronics, garments, and lighting that had U.S. orders placed through to the end of the year, have now seen those orders abruptly canceled. Much stock has been left sitting in the factories.
The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based English-language outlet, reported on April 10 that some Chinese exporters have opted to surrender their cargo to the shipping companies mid-voyage rather than deal with the new tariffs.
“No one will buy them after the tariffs are imposed,” the publication quoted one client as saying to a Chinese exporter.
Mainland Chinese outlet Caixin reported that the port of Shanghai—normally bustling with ships—was virtually empty on the day after the United States imposed its 145 percent tariff. The outlet expects U.S.–China shipping to fall by half in the near future.
In the wake of the tariff hikes, Chinese fashion giant Shein attempted to shift some of its production out of China, but was barred from doing so by the Chinese authorities.
Shein and Temu, another Chinese online retailer, will see price hikes following the cancellation of the de minimis shipping exemption, which allows packages containing goods worth $800 or less to be imported duty-free to the United States.
The restriction is set to apply to mainland China and Hong Kong starting on May 2, affecting about 11 percent of current U.S.–China trade.
Beijing Doubles Down
On April 8, a day before the Trump administration put a 90-day pause on tariff hikes targeting scores of countries worldwide, Beijing’s commerce ministry said it would “fight to the end” with the United States on trade.
The Chinese commerce ministry said China’s retaliatory actions were a “completely legitimate” means of protecting national interests and “maintaining the normal international trade order.”
Introducing a 28,000-word white paper on U.S.–China trade, a commerce ministry official said on April 9 that Beijing “possesses resolute determination and a wide range of measures” to counter American tariffs and other economic and trade restrictions.
In a regular press conference held April 10, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said that Beijing “is not scared” of fighting a trade war.
Tough Times Ahead
Meanwhile, Chinese businessmen and bloggers have questioned where the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) obstinacy and propaganda will lead them.
According to an early April report by a mainland Chinese blog called “Logistics and Supply Chain Management,” a furniture factory owner in Jiangsu Province, eastern China, calculated that with all the additional fees, a tariff of just 20 percent would consume the factory’s entire profit.
Liu Ming, director of an electronics factory in the Jiangsu city of Suzhou, who used a pseudonym, told the blog that while the company had a profit margin of 16 percent in 2024, “now that the tariffs have been applied, we are operating at a loss.”
Posting on social media platform X, a Chinese exporter who works with American clients said that when the tariff was still 34 percent, it was still possible to work with the raised rate, but the 125 percent tariff “amounts to wiping out Chinese workers’ jobs.”
“As far as I know, nearly all U.S. importers have stopped shipments from China,” he said.
A worker in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, said in an April 9 video posted to Chinese social media that with tariffs eliminating all profit margins from those exporting to the United States, factories and suppliers will be compelled to compete with each other in the domestic Chinese market.
“It’s going to be a race to the bottom,” he said. While not directly criticizing how the CCP handled the trade disputes, he called out Chinese netizens who “spend all day on the internet talking about fighting [the trade war] ‘at all costs.’”
“I bet you’ll soon find yourselves among those ‘costs,’” he added.
A vlogger in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province, said earlier this month on social media that the Chinese market’s ability to absorb the country’s consumer products would not be enough for a significant number of workers to keep their jobs.
“Many companies engaged in foreign trade are sure to cut production,” the vlogger said.
A finance worker in Xiamen, a coastal Chinese city in Fujian Province, warned on April 9 that the export business coming to a standstill would have far-reaching effects beyond manufacturing and logistics. “Don’t quit your job, keep it if you can,” she said in a social media post.
‘A Series of Traps’
China expert and current affairs commentator Wang He told The Epoch Times that the CCP may not have anticipated Trump’s move to pause the raft of global reciprocal tariffs he announced on April 2.
“The CCP wanted to take the opportunity to form an anti-U.S. united front” with countries around the world affected by the U.S. tariffs, only to be the odd one out in refusing to negotiate, he said. “As a result, communist China walked into a series of traps that Trump set for it.”
Earlier, on April 9, while at a White House event, Trump had expressed confidence that “China wants to make a deal.” However, he added, “It’s one of those things they don’t know quite—they’re proud people.”
Speaking on April 15 at a press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “the ball is in China’s court” as far as talks go.
“China needs to make a deal with us. We don’t have to make a deal with them,” Leavitt said, noting that she was quoting the president.
On April 17, Trump told reporters at the White House that China had contacted his administration.
“I believe we’re going to have a deal with China, and if we don’t, we’re going to have a deal anyway, because we will set a certain target, and that’s going to be it,” the president said.
Satellite Images Expose China’s Secretive Nuclear Submarine Force
Newly published satellite imagery shows the latest developments at a Chinese naval base, which serves as the hub for China’s nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
Naval analyst Alex Luck noted that Google Earth recently updated satellite imagery of China’s Qingdao First Submarine Base on the eastern coast. The images reveal at least six submarines docked near a pier, with one additional submarine visible in a drydock, per Luck’s observations.
The analyst observed that five of the nuclear-powered submarines captured in the imagery were equipped with conventional armaments.
The sole Chinese Type 092 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine also appeared in the image. The experimental Type 092 is now inoperable and is replaced by its more advanced successor, the Type 094, the Federation of American Scientists wrote in a report in March. With regard to the unidentified submarine in the drydock, Luck suggested that it could be a boat undergoing scrapping, given maintenance is regularly also performed at another site. -Newsweek
The latest research by Department of Defense says it believes that China will expand its submarine fleet from 60 to 65 by the end of 2025. China’s submarine fleet could reach 80 in the next ten years, according to the Pentagon.
As China continues to expand its military might, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, is sounding the alarm of the U.S.’s ability to confront China. “The U.S. does not have the throughput, responsiveness, or agility needed to deter our adversaries,” Gen. Caine told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The U.S. military is bracing for possible confrontation with China over the Taiwan Strait. Adm. Sam Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned that China is actively preparing for major military actions targeting Taiwan, according to the Washington Times.
China is said to be building a novel type of amphibious vessel called Shuiqiao, or “water bridges,” to bolster a possible Taiwan invasion, the India Defense Review reports. These adaptable barges are engineered to swiftly transport heavy equipment across challenging coastal terrain, the report said.
Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, has vowed to boost the island nation’s defense spending to 3 percent of its gross domestic product. The increase would bring its military spending to up approximately one-fifth of its total spending budget.
“Of course, there is the possibility that Xi Jinping would decide that this is the right time for the Chinese Communist Party to take aggressive action,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said of China’s dictator. “I think it’s exactly the wrong thing for them to do,” Coons added. “I think they would find a forceful and united response.”
