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‘Civil War Is Now Official’ – Syria Erupts Into Worst Bloodshed Since Assad’s Fall

Any lingering delusions that Syria could emerge from its Western-imposed, regime-change victimhood and enter an era of peace and stability were obliterated on Thursday, as 48 people were killed in battles between supporters of the deposed Bashar al Assad government and the country’s new radical Islamist regime. As all-out civil war looms, increasingly disturbing sectarian violence has an important minority sect asking for Russian intervention to safeguard their lives. 

Insane videos coming out of Syria after the announcement of an uprising against Jolani’s regime pic.twitter.com/sizIupxiSf
— COMBATE | (@upholdreality) March 7, 2025
In the town of Jableh, which lies in Syria’s coastal Latakia province, pro-Assad forces ambushed and killed 16 members of the regime’s security forces. In the ensuing retaliation, 28 pro-Assad militants and four civilians died, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Latakia hold the highest concentration of Alawites — the minority sect of Islam that’s principally found in Syria, with the Assad family themselves being the most prominent members. Alawites comprise about 10% of the country’s population. Notably, the province is also home to the Russian-operated Khmeimim air base. The ambush targeted regime forces who’d carried an operation in rural Latakia aimed at arresting a former Assad government official.
Thursday’s battles took place in Syria’s coastal Latakia province, which holds the greatest concentration of Alawites 

The ambush was well-executed, according to a security official in Latakia. “[In] a well-planned and premeditated attack, several groups of Assad militia remnants attacked our positions and checkpoints, targeting many of our patrols in the Jableh area,” Mustafa Kneifati told German news outlet DW. Those pro-Assad forces are said to have included soldiers loyal to former Syrian army General Suheil al-Hassan, though it’s unknown whether Hassan himself participated in the battles. The fighting spanned over a period of hours, with regime security forces responding to the ambush with helicopter gunships and artillery.

Alawites in Jableh countryside defend themselves after Al-Jolani gangs attack their villages #BREAKING #BreakingNews #Syria #عاجل #سوريا #جبلة #العلويين pic.twitter.com/6mBOUOEG2f
— Al-Julani gangs (@AlJulanigangs) March 6, 2025
Thursday’s fighting may be just a precursor to something far more intense: There are reports of large convoys of regime forces moving toward the Syrian coastal region. 

The combat comes alongside rising sectarian violence, with Sunni militants victimizing Alawites who had long enjoyed peace as the Alawite Assad family ruled the country from 1971 until December 2024, when President Bashar al Assad fled as Sunni extremists took over. While the new government repeatedly warns against sectarian reprisals against Alawites, citizens say security forces themselves have engaged in executions, kidnappings and home seizures. 

Videos are circulating on social media which purportedly show the horrors being visited on the Alawites. From a grisly video that’s said to show dozens of massacred Alawites in a heap, to another that’s described as capturing Sunnis shooting at the residences of Alawites in Homs province: 

So America, Turkey and Israel helped Osama bin Laden’s guys take over Syria – what’s the worst that could happen, right?
Okay, I know you’re remembering that time Obama…

Could A Bombshell Discovery Render All of Biden’s Presidential Actions ‘Null and Void’?

Authored by Matt Margolis via PJ Media,

The Biden presidency might have been the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the American people. A shocking investigation by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project has revealed that virtually every document bearing Joe Biden’s signature during his presidency was signed by an autopen — except for one.
Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP

What makes this revelation particularly damning is that the only document confirmed to have Biden’s actual signature was his letter announcing his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race. Let that sink in for a moment.

Remember when House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) revealed his discussion with Biden when Biden couldn’t recall signing the executive order halting LNG exports? Now we know why — he probably didn’t. The real question is: Who did? Who was running the country while Biden was not all there?

WHOEVER CONTROLLED THE AUTOPEN CONTROLLED THE PRESIDENCY
We gathered every document we could find with Biden’s signature over the course of his presidency.
All used the same autopen signature except for the the announcement that the former President was dropping out of the… https://t.co/CC3oJUkNr4 pic.twitter.com/mtNrZsALDu
— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) March 6, 2025
The use of the presidential autopen dates back to the 1950s, and there’s been much debate about its legality. In 2013, Barack Obama became the first president to sign a bill into law using an autopen. He was vacationing in Hawaii at the time. His office relied on a 30-page memo from President George W. Bush’s legal team asserting that the president’s presence was not required as long as said president had authorized the signature. 

What’s not clear, in the case of Biden, is who was running the autopen and whether Biden was aware it was happening. 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is demanding that the Department of Justice investigate whether Biden’s obvious cognitive decline allowed unelected bureaucrats to essentially run the government without presidential oversight. If this is true — and let’s be honest, all signs point to yes — every executive order, every pardon, and every official action taken under Biden’s name could be constitutionally void.

Bailey’s letter to Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general of the Department of Justice, spells it out perfectly.

I write to request that you conduct a full investigation into President Biden’s mental capacity in his final days in office. By now, Biden’s mental decline is famous. Under the 25th Amendment, his inability to make decisions should have meant a succession of power. Instead, it appears staffers and officers in the Biden administration may have exploited Biden’s incapacity so they could issue orders without an accountable President of sound mind approving them. That would explain why the Biden administration’s orders were aggressively much farther to the left than any previous President. If in fact Biden’s staffers were exploiting his mental decline, those orders are null and void.

The evidence is overwhelming. We know that Biden’s handlers desperately tried to prevent anyone from meeting with him one-on-one. Even Democratic insiders admit the truth. DNC…

Watch: SpaceX Gears Up For Another Starship Launch Attempt

SpaceX canceled Monday’s Starship/Super Heavy test flight (Flight Test 8) after failing to resolve technical issues with the mega-rocket in the final minute of the countdown. Now, Elon Musk’s rocket company has announced that Flight Test 8 has been rescheduled for Thursday evening. 

“Counting down to Starship’s eighth flight test. Weather looks favorable at the pad, and the 60-minute launch window opens at 5:30 p.m. CT,” SpaceX wrote on X late in the afternoon. 

Counting down to Starship’s eighth flight test. Weather looks favorable at the pad and the 60-minute launch window opens at 5:30 p.m. CT → https://t.co/alyJTRtOIP pic.twitter.com/EWUCtBhojH
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 6, 2025
 

*  *  * 

Just over six weeks after SpaceX’s Starship-Super Heavy Flight Test 7 lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas, ending in a dramatic spectacle—the massive booster successfully caught by ‘Chopsticks’ while Starship itself was lost in a fireball over the Atlantic Ocean—Elon Musk’s space company is set to conduct Flight Test 8 of the world’s largest rocket this evening. 

Starship’s launch window opens at 1730 local time at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in south Texas. The primary goal of this launch is to test Starship’s ability to deploy Starlink “simulator” satellites into low Earth orbit. 

Summary of Flight Test 8:

Launch Details:

Scheduled for Monday, March 3

60-minute launch window opens at 5:30 p.m. CT

Live webcast starts 40 minutes before liftoff on SpaceX’s X account and X TV app

Post-Flight 7 Investigation & Upgrades [upgrades made after Flight Test 7’s firey demise of Starship]: 

Hardware and operational changes made to increase upper stage reliability

Forward flap upgrades reduce reentry heating exposure

Propulsion system enhancements include a 25% increase in propellant volume

Avionics system redesigned for added capability and redundancy

Flight Objectives:

Follows same suborbital trajectory as previous missions

First payload deployment test (four Starlink simulators)

Multiple reentry experiments to improve upper stage return and catch capabilities

Super Heavy booster launch, return, and catch attempt

Key Experiments & Tests:

Starlink simulators to be deployed, but expected to burn up on reentry

Single Raptor engine relight in space test planned

Reentry stress tests: Tiles removed to test vulnerable areas, Metallic tile alternatives tested, including active cooling, and Structural stress tests on rear flaps at max reentry pressure.

Catch fitting thermal performance test

Radar sensor accuracy tests on chopsticks for improved vehicle retrieval

Super Heavy Booster Enhancements:

Upgraded avionics, including a more powerful flight computer

Improved power/network distribution and smart batteries

Booster Return & Catch Criteria:

Safety measures in place: Healthy systems required on booster tower and Final manual command needed from Flight Director before boostback burn. 

If conditions are not met, booster will soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico

The crypto-based online betting marketplace Polymarket has nine bets on today’s test flight, including the following: Will “Chopsticks catch Super Heavy?” Those odds stand at 78%. 

Watch Test Flight 8 Here:  

. . . 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/06/2025 – 18:00…

China Acknowledges ‘Sporadic’ Human Bird Flu Cases

Authored by Lily Zhou and Luo Ya via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

“Sporadic” cases of human avian influenza infections have been identified in China, the regime has said, after staying quiet about outbreaks in poultry.
Rescued chickens gather in an aviary at Farm Sanctuary’s Southern California Sanctuary in Acton, Calif., on Oct. 5, 2022. Mario Tama/Getty Images

The announcement comes after two workers in China’s disease prevention and control sector told The Epoch Times the regime had covered up the severity of respiratory disease outbreaks in the country. One of the workers also said there had been limited human-to-human transmission of H5N1 avian influenza, or bird flu.

On Feb. 27, Beijing Daily, which is under the control of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), cited the regime’s infectious disease prevention and control unit, saying there had been a rise in outbreaks of norovirus disease; hand, foot and mouth disease; tuberculosis; and other diseases.

The report also said that COVID-19 was spreading at a “relatively low level” and that outbreaks of mpox (previously known as monkeypox) and human avian influenza had been “sporadic” and “low-incidence,” without providing details.

Microbiologist Sean Lin, a member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China and former researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, criticized the CCP’s failure to disclose more information.

“[The regime] had to acknowledge there are cases of avian influenza in humans,” he told The Epoch Times. “It said [the infections were] ’sporadic‘ and ’low-incidence,’ but didn’t reveal the exact numbers of cases, severe cases, or fatality. Neither did it clarify where the cases are or whether there are high-risk areas. This is very irresponsible.”

On March 3, the municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in China’s southwestern Chongqing city included human avian influenza in its notice of health risks in March.

The municipal CDC in Huaihua city, Hunan Province, held a training session in late February on the response to respiratory diseases including the flu, COVID-19, and human avian influenza, the local government said on March 2.

Shanghai’s municipal authorities, which banned the trading of live poultry in the city in 2024, have also extended the ban to the end of 2027.

A Shanghai resident posted a photo of a sign on social media that was reportedly taken at an emergency department in mid-February. The sign asks patients to inform medical staff if they have been in contact with birds in the past 10 days, have been in contact with COVID-19 patients, or have travel history to certain parts of the world in the past two weeks.

Lin said actions taken by local governments suggest they are very concerned about potential large-scale outbreaks of bird flu among humans.

Bird flu, which includes several subtypes, is a highly pathogenic disease caused by the influenza A virus. It has mainly affected birds and other animals. People can catch the viruses from milk, feces, or other bodily fluids from infected animals, but known human-to-human transmission of the virus has been extremely rare,…

Is Pakistan The Canary In China’s BRI Coal Mine?

Authored by Milton Ezrati via The Epoch Times,

Pakistan is failing, in large part because of its close association with Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Because coal mines tend to emit large quantities of poisonous carbon monoxide, miners in the old days would carry a caged canary into the mine with them. The bird’s more delicate constitution would succumb to rising gas levels long before the miners and signal that human life might be in jeopardy. The bird’s death cued the miners to get out. Pakistan, as an early and enthusiastic participant in the BRI, is suffering as a consequence and may well be issuing a signal for other participants to leave this particular “mine.”

Pakistan’s biggest problem centers on the power grid built for the country by the BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road.” It was expensive from the start, and because China built considerably more generating capacity than Pakistan needs, the burden of debt Pakistan now faces is simply unsupportable.

Tellingly, the problem is not just an unfortunate miscalculation of the sort that occurs frequently when nations invest. More ominously for all BRI participants, it is a feature of how Beijing’s scheme works.

In the scheme, Beijing approaches a less developed nation and offers to build the kind of infrastructure that presumably will help that nation make economic gains. Beijing offers to arrange loans for the recipient to pay for the project, always from state-owned Chinese banks. It also arranges for Chinese contractors to do the construction and for Chinese management to run the project once it is complete.

All the advantages lie on Beijing’s side. If, for some reason, the recipient nation cannot meet the financial obligations of the loan, ownership will revert to Beijing. Even if the recipient nation can repay the loan, that recipient remains beholden to Beijing to sustain the project and make it worthwhile.

There is another source of difficulty. Because Chinese authorities choose the projects, always for political and diplomatic rather than economic reasons, the projects often miss the needs of the recipient nation’s economy or are too large or too small. Since Beijing is using the recipient nation’s money, albeit in a loan, it has little incentive to match the projects to needs. What makes matters worse is that the nations approached by the Chinese regime seldom have the ability to assess the economic needs accurately.

For Pakistan, China’s initial offer, about a decade ago, looked attractive. The country was short of electric generating capacity. China came in and built a whole series of coal, solar, and hydroelectric plants, an effort that cost the equivalent of some $25 billion, a huge sum for Pakistan. In addition to the obligation to repay the loan in only 10 years, Pakistan also had to pledge to take all the electricity generated by the array of Chinese-managed facilities for the next 40 years and further promised the Chinese state companies running them a 34 percent return on the effort.

It should have…

One Florida Town Just Tripled Its HOA Fees To Over $3,300 A Month

So much for moving to Florida to pay less due to taxes…

That’s because one Florida town has shocked residents by tripling HOA fees to over $3,300, according to The Daily Mail.

Winter Park Woods, near Orlando, raised its monthly fees dramatically, the Daily Mail reported, citing WESH. Longtime resident Lorraine Roy now pays $3,371.79 for her three-bedroom condo.

“This is way too high,” she said. “And I love this location, which is why I stayed here all this time, through the ups and downs.”

Roy is currently resisting offers to sell her condo but acknowledges it may be necessary in the future. The Winter Park Woods Condominiums Association raised fees due to millions owed to Orange County for code violations, WESH reported.
Winter Park Woods

The Daily Mail report says that the hike also covers increased insurance costs and new legislative requirements following the 2021 Surfside condo collapse, which mandates structural inspections for condos over 30 years old and additional repair funds.

Insurance costs have risen due to more frequent natural disasters like hurricanes and flooding, pushing HOA fees higher for repairs and mitigation. “We underfunded the reserves, that has been happening,” Roy admitted.

Resident Shane Costa’s fee rose from $634 to over $2,100, prompting him to attempt to sell. However, an investor offered him only $70,000, far below the value. “The simple truth is developers are going to come in and redevelop these properties,” said Jeff Brandes, Founder & President of the Florida Policy Project.

Costa added, “I’m in a little bit better circumstance than most people right now, but there’s people losing their homes.” Steve Fieldman, another resident, agreed: “There are people who live here no more, and they just couldn’t withstand the pressure and had to sell out for a much lower price than they feel was fair.”

Joel Berner, a senior economist at Realtor.com, noted, “HOAs are getting tough all across the country lately, but especially in Florida.”

Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/05/2025 – 18:00…

If We Set Aside Ideology, Is There Anything We Can Agree On?

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Just the experiment of setting aside ideological certainties for a moment would be instructive.

Humans are hard-wired to prefer simplicity over complexity, and this is the foundation of ideology, which like mythology takes a complex world and radically simplifies it to an easily digestible construct. (I tease all this apart in my book The Mythology of Progress.)

Being social animals, humans are also hard-wired to quickly form loyalties to groups and gravitate to one camp. Very few football fans (if any) have zero loyalty to any team and have zero emotional stake (i.e. there’s no team they hope loses and none they hope will win).

Uncertainty generates anxiety, and so we settle the real world’s many uncertainties with internal certainty: an ideology is a simple sketch of how the world works, and we will defend this emotionally powerful construct even as evidence piles up that it doesn’t accurately map all of the world’s complexities. We will deny, rationalize and cherry-pick examples to “prove” our ideological certainties map the real world.

The problem with radically simplified constructs like mythologies and ideologies is they cannot possibly map the world accurately as complex, interactive systems don’t reduce down to a simplified construct. So every ideological construct ends up denying, rationalizing and cherry-picking examples to cover the inherent weaknesses of simplifying the world into bite-sized constructs.

Our intense drive to establish and nurture loyalties leads to emotionally satisfying but often counter-productive convolutions, such as any enemy of my enemy is my friend and any friend of my enemy is my enemy.

The problems with ideological constructs are magnified in tumultuous times as ideologies map a rapidly shrinking share of the real world. The internally coherent ideology drifts further into incoherence, and our natural defense is not to become more open-minded (i.e. actively embrace uncertainty and entertain new ideas) but to cling even harder to the simplified certainties that generate our internal sense of self and certainty.

Since the faithful of competing ideologies are pursuing the same strategy to reduce anxiety, our loyalties clash with increasing intensity. That possibility that all the ideologies claiming to map the real world are increasingly detached from real-world dynamics doesn’t occur to any true believer in any camp, for each believer remains confident (and when pushed, becomes ever more adamant) that their ideology is the one true construct that faithfully maps all of the real world’s immense complexity.

Such is the power of these internally coherent constructs that we don’t see them as belief structures, we see them as the bedrock of truth. We don’t recognize our ideological beliefs as beliefs open to question, and so when challenged, we respond defensively: Ideology? What ideology? What I’m saying is the truth. Yes, true to us, but an accurate account / map of all the world’s complexity? No.

To each believer in an ideology, the problem isn’t that their ideology is not mapping the real world with sufficient accuracy to successfully navigate increasingly stormy seas. The problem is the other ideologies are obstructing our solutions, which are guaranteed…

Russia’s Top UN Representative Exposed The West’s Role In The Global Growth Of Terrorism

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

Russian Permanent UN Representative Vasily Nebenzia pulled no punches at the UNSC last month when responding to the Secretary General’s latest report on terrorism. 

He called the West out for using such groups “to achieve their geopolitical goals, including the overthrow of inconvenient Governments and the creation and maintenance of hotbeds of regional instability.” 

He also claimed that they’re “cultivating a terrorist hydra” to justify aggression against the afflicted countries and their occupation.

This led to Nebenzia discussing the growth of terrorism in West Africa, which he said isn’t due to Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger fighting more robustly against this scourge like the Secretary General’s report claimed, but NATO’s war on Libya as well as recent Western and Ukrainian support for such groups. 

On the topic of Ukraine, he mentioned how it “had previously been used as a staging ground for foreign terrorist fighters, and now it has morphed into a logistical hub”. 

Nebenzia also tied this to USAID.

Afghanistan was the next place that he talked about in this context, reminding everyone of how “NATO troops abandoned vast quantities of weapons and equipment there, which then fell into the hands of ISIL inter alia.” 

This explains the explosion of terrorism there over the past few years. He didn’t say as much, but it can be understood that this was part of a cunning plan to indirectly worsen security along Russia’s southern flank in Central Asia, all with the intent of distracting from its military focus on NATO.

Nebenzia then turned to West Asia for the final part of his speech where he talked about how Western countries don’t want to repatriate their foreign fighters nor their family members, unlike Russia which has already done so with more than 500 of them.

Keeping them in camps there creates “hotbeds of radicalization and are used by terrorists to recruit new fighters.” 

This observation cynically suggests that the West will continue weaponizing terrorism in the region in pursuit of its political goals.

The importance of his speech is that it summarizes the West’s role in the global growth of terrorism, which that New Cold War bloc dishonestly blames on some of the countries fighting against such groups like those in the Sahelian Alliance/Confederation. Just like USAID was mostly just a cover for laundering funds to anti-government groups and infiltrating foreign agents into those countries, so too were the West’s “anti-terrorist” operations actually meant to create and maintain hotbeds of regional instability.

Neither aimed to achieve what they officially set out to do, which is improve living standards and fight terrorism respectively, with each really doing the opposite of what they claimed. 

The combination of USAID and “anti-terrorist” operations is largely responsible for the chaos that’s spread across the world from 2011 onward beginning with the theater-wide Color Revolutions known as the “Arab Spring”. 

It’s only after acknowledging these facts that the world can finally work towards repairing the damage.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/04/2025 – 23:50…

“Anti-Car Insanity”: NYC To Widen 6th Avenue Bike Lanes, Cutting Vehicle Traffic To One Lane And Inviting More Congestion

Now that President Trump has rescinded the congestion fee in New York City, local bureaucrats are doing what they do best: making every problem they can get their hands on worse.

We say that because now it is being reported that the Department of Transportation plans to widen Sixth Avenue’s bike lane from 6 to 10 feet between West 14th and West 35th streets this spring—removing one of four vehicle lanes and inviting gridlock, according to the NY Post.

“This is New York City, not the Tour de France,” said NYC Council Minority Leader Joann Ariola (R-Queens). She blasted the DOT’s “anti-car insanity,” arguing it endangers New Yorkers by slowing emergency responders.

Manhattan activist Maria Danzilo agreed, predicting worse congestion: “Vehicles will have a harder time navigating.” She claimed the change mainly benefits delivery-app companies and e-bike riders, not regular cyclists.

The NY Post writes that the DOT presented its controversial plan Monday, citing a 20.6% rise in bike traffic since 2019 and 345 bike-related injuries, including four deaths. Despite concerns over gridlock and lack of public input, Community Board 5’s transportation committee approved it 10-2.

“DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez’s hypocrisy is off the chart,” said Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens). “What he’s really doing is giving a giant middle finger to hardworking New Yorkers.” He urged Trump to kill congestion pricing and reverse DOT’s street designs, blaming them for worsening traffic.

Trump’s vow to eliminate bike lanes led some to see the plan as retaliation. “It sounds like revenge over Trump weighing in,” said Jason Curtis Anderson of One City Rising, accusing the DOT of being run by “radical bike nuts” who ignore businesses.

Supporters defended the redesign. StreetsPAC’s Eric McClure said, “Three travel lanes are plenty for free-flowing motor vehicle traffic.” DOT spokesman Scott Gastel claimed it was based on community input and pre-congestion pricing data, insisting it would “specifically address congestion” with no major impact on travel speeds.

Locals weren’t convinced. “It’s a horrible idea,” said Uber driver Madigata Gassama. “They don’t care about anybody.” Chelsea resident Ana Mani fumed, “This city is run by corruption. I hate it. I can’t even park in front of my house, and now they’re removing all these things. It’s dangerous for cyclists, too.”

Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/04/2025 – 18:00…

China & Canada Retaliate Against Trump’s Tariff War As Global Stocks Slide

Asian markets closed lower, European stocks are in the red, and US equity futures are trending lower this morning as worsening global trade war concerns weigh on risk sentiment.

On Monday, President Trump reiterated that he would impose tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico starting Tuesday, stating that there was “no room left” for negotiation. He also noted that an additional 10% levy would be applied to imports from China.

Fast-forward to Tuesday morning. Trump’s 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada took effect, prompting Canada to retaliate with 25% tariffs on $100 billion worth of US imports. Mexico is expected to respond later.

Trump also introduced an additional 10% tariff on Chinese imports early Tuesday, bringing the total tax to 20% following a similar increase last month. China swiftly retaliated with tariffs on US food and agricultural products and an export ban on some defense firms. 

According to an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Finance, Beijing imposed new duties of 10% to 15% on US food and agricultural products. 

Here’s an excerpt from the announcement: 

15% tariff will be imposed on chicken, wheat, corn, and cotton.

10% tariff will be imposed on sorghum, soybeans, pork, beef, aquatic products, fruits, vegetables, and dairy products

For the imported goods listed in the appendix originating from the United States, corresponding tariffs will be levied on the basis of the current applicable tariff rates. The current bonded and tax reduction and exemption policies remain unchanged, and the additional tariffs will not be reduced or exempted

Goods that have been shipped from the place of departure prior to March 10, 2025, and imported from March 10, 2025 to April 12, 2025, shall not be subject to the additional tariffs prescribed in this announcement

Commenting on China’s retaliatory tariffs, Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING Bank, told clients: “The measures are still relatively measured for now. I think this retaliation shows China remains patient and has refrained from ‘flipping the table’ so to speak despite the recent escalation.”

“China’s hit-back isn’t exactly aggressive — a 15% tariff on US agricultural goods, but nothing broad-based on tech or autos, suggests to me they’re leaving room for negotiation,” said Billy Leung, an investment strategist at Global X ETF, adding, “That’s probably why Chinese stocks are rebounding instead of selling off harder.”

Dilin Wu, a research strategist at Pepperstone Group Ltd., said, “The immediate impact of these new tariffs on China remains manageable — the measures are currently concentrated in specific areas.”

“Should Beijing roll out additional pro-growth measures — such as large-scale fiscal stimulus or targeted support for high-tech industries and domestic consumption — it could further bolster market confidence,” Wu said. 

Sea of red for global equity futures across most regions. 

China’s Ministry of Finance warned:  “The US’s unilateral tariff increase damages the multilateral trading system, increases the burden on US companies and consumers, and undermines the foundation of economic and trade cooperation between China and the US.” 

Should Trump respond with retaliatory tariffs, the risk of sentiment continuation could continue. In the US, the growth…