Economics

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

The Biden administration announced an 11th-hour probe on Monday into China’s trade practice regarding “legacy” chips that power everything from smart appliances and phones to the electric grid and weapons systems.

The administration has already imposed 50 percent tariffs on semiconductors from China, which are set to take effect on Jan. 1. The new Section 301 probe could pave the way for the incoming Trump administration to add more tariffs on legacy chips or take other measures.

The probe was launched because evidence indicates that the Chinese regime’s attempts to dominate domestic and global chip markets “appear to have and to threaten detrimental impacts on the United States and other economies, undermining the competitiveness of American industry and workers, critical U.S. supply chains, and U.S. economic security,” the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the Chinese regime’s Ministry of Commerce accused the United States of “disrupting and distorting the global chip production and supply chains” and “harming the interests of American companies and consumers,” and vowed to “take all necessary measures to firmly defend its interests.”

The Biden administration will begin accepting public comments on Jan. 6. The probe will then be handed over to the incoming Trump administration for completion, officials said.

According to the Federal Register notice, the deadline for submitting comments will be set on Feb. 5, and a public hearing will be held on March 11 and March 12. It is unclear whether President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead USTR, Jamieson Greer, a trade lawyer and former USTR chief during Trump’s first administration, will be confirmed by the U.S. Senate by then.

The investigation will initially focus on China’s legacy chip production, downstream products that contain legacy chips, and wafers that are used to make the chips, including silicon carbide substrates.

According to USTR, China is projected to reach around half of the world’s capacity to build foundational logic chips by 2029, and to lead in production capacity for other types of legacy chips. Evidence indicates Beijing has been using unfair trade practices to achieve the goals, such as subsidies, state-backed hacking, forced technology transfer, wage suppression, market gate-keeping, and opaque regulatory preferences and discrimination.

“This is enabling its companies to rapidly expand capacity and to offer artificially lower priced chips that threaten to significantly harm and potentially eliminate their market-oriented competition,” U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai told reporters on a conference call.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said her department’s research shows two-thirds of U.S. products using chips had Chinese legacy chips in them, and half of U.S. companies did not know the origin of their chips including some in the defense industry, findings that were “fairly alarming.”

After the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the supply of semiconductors and temporarily halted production of autos and medical equipment, the United States has sought to build its own semiconductor supply chain with $52.7 billion in new subsidies for chip production, research, and workforce development.

Raimondo said China’s plans to build more than 60 percent of the world’s new legacy chip capacity over the next decade were discouraging investment elsewhere and constituted unfair competition.

It “undercuts our companies and makes the U.S. dependent on China for the chips that we use every day in so many things,” she told reporters.

The probe is being conducted under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the same unfair trade practices statute that Trump invoked during his first term to impose tariffs of up to 25 percent on some $370 billion worth of Chinese imports in 2018 and 2019, triggering a nearly three-year trade war with Beijing.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration kept all the Trump-era tariffs and added more after a four-year review of the 301 tariffs found that Beijing had continued to use unfair trade practices.

Since September, tariffs on electric vehicles from China quadrupled to 100 percent. Also, 25 percent tariffs on natural graphite, permanent magnets, and non-EV batteries will take effect on Jan. 1, 2026.

Trump’s transition team did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment by the time of publishing.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times,

Given the coming technological revolutions in warfare, it is important that the United States and our allies get out in front early, keep the lead, and degrade the adversary’s capabilities.

China’s “loyal wingman” fighter drones get a lot of attention these days. The wingman is a force multiplier, meant to fly in numbers alongside its crewed jet fighters or to lead a fleet of smaller drones. If deployed in a swarm, the wingmen and smaller drones could quickly overwhelm a fleet of manned fighter jets and air defenses. They are jet-powered but far less expensive than a regular fighter jet to fly, in part because they do not require a trained pilot. Some simulated dogfights between human pilots and artificial intelligence (AI) pilots who learn on the fly have resulted in AI wins as far back as 2020.

The latest iteration of the Chinese wingman drone—called the Feihong FH-97A—appears to be a vast improvement over the earlier versions unveiled in 2022 and 2023. The FH-97A is reportedly faster than its U.S. counterpart, the XQ-58A Valkyrie. The range of the FH-97A is about 620 miles. The current range is more than enough to reach anywhere in Taiwan, plus sea lanes on the eastern side of the island that would be critical for provisioning Taiwan in case of a war or naval blockade. From Chinese possessions, the FH-97A can range all of South Korea, the East China Sea, parts of Japan and the Philippines, and all of the South China Sea through island hopping on China’s airfields and artificial islands.

Moreover, the FH-97A could, in the future, be used to attack any part of the United States or Europe, given that it can catapult launch from aircraft carriers and because the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has plans to give it aerial refueling capabilities. The drones will add to the power of the PLA Air Force’s other recent innovations (and thefts from the United States), including stealth fighter jets and stealth bombers. The drones can be used for air- and land-attack missions, electronic warfare, reconnaissance, and bomber escort.

While the United States has long had better-trained fighter pilots and more advanced planes, giving it air superiority over China, those tables could be turning. Without the need for pilots but rather the utilization of AI programs that have demonstrated superiority, China’s age of high technology and mass industrial production could far outproduce the United States and shift air superiority decisively to the PLA.

This would have immediate and dire consequences for countries already under military pressure from Beijing, namely Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, and India.

One promising defense against Chinese drones is laser-based weapons; for example, the HELIOS system deployed on a U.S. naval destroyer in 2022 and the DragonFire system tested by the United Kingdom in January.

The DragonFire laser can destroy targets with pinpoint accuracy in its line of sight with shots that would cut through the drone’s mechanics or explode its warheads. Each shot costs less than £10 ($12.61) to fire for 10 seconds, suggesting they could be used to cheaply slice into an enemy system with repeated passes. Compare that to the cost of a missile interceptor at a million dollars or more, which can be a waste of money against some of the cheapest Iranian military drones, for example, that cost at most $2,000 each. The British system is planned for deployment on the country’s naval ships by 2027, with the British army also considering a deployment. Scientists in China are also developing laser weapons, including for use from space.

Laser weapons could eventually negate the power of intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles and force surface and air combatants underwater, where lasers are ineffective.

Subsurface combatants could become relatively useless against land targets except perhaps those closest to the coast. In the case of Ukraine, for example, the widespread adoption of laser weapons could create a stalemate for years to come.

The United States is now the world’s strongest superpower, considered economically and militarily. Many have come before, and none lasted forever. One mistake that results in the loss of the technological lead to China or Russia, for example, could be the end of the United States as we know it. Now is our chance to avoid that disaster.

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Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday he would aim to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and will launch an anti-drug advertising campaign inside the United States.

“I will immediately designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,” Trump said in Arizona at a Turning Point conference, reiterating a campaign promise to make the declaration.

While in office in 2019, Trump had planned to make the designation and ultimately did not make the move after a request from then-Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who said he wanted cooperation with the U.S. government on dealing with drug cartels.

Trump’s election platform has stated when he returns to the White House, he will direct the Department of Defense to use “special forces, cyber warfare, and other covert and overt actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations.”

Trump on Sunday also previewed a new advertising initiative designed to provide information about the effects of drug use.

“We’re going to advertise how bad drugs are for you,” Trump said in Arizona at a Turning Point conference, referring to the ad campaign. “They ruin your look, they ruin your face, they ruin your skin, they ruin your teeth.”

While he did not provide more details about the campaign, it appears to be the first time Trump has made reference to the plan.

In the 1970s and 1980s, anti-drug ad blitzes were launched across the United States, culminating in former first lady Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” campaign that was designed to prevent younger Americans from doing drugs. Public schools also featured the Drug Abuse Resistance Education, also known as D.A.R.E, that sought to provide information on illegal drugs and controlled substances, as well as prevent gang membership and violent behavior.

Over the past several years, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died of overdoses of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is easy to do due to its potency—just 2 milligrams can be fatal. The drug, which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, is often trafficked across the U.S.–Mexico border by drug cartels based in Mexico.

Trump’s 2024 campaign has heavily leaned into messaging around stopping the fentanyl epidemic as well as illegal immigration into the United States. Since winning the election last month, the president-elect has said he will also start operations for mass deportations and would declare a nationwide emergency over the matter.

The incoming Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, a former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other Trump officials have said that they will prioritize targeting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes or are deemed a threat to U.S. national security for deportation.

They have also pledged to deport anyone residing in the country illegally, although Trump has indicated he would consider allowing illegal immigrants who have been in the United States since childhood to remain under certain conditions.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates that 11 million illegal immigrants were living in the United States as of 2022, the latest statistics that are available. While campaigning in the 2024 contest, Trump talked about creating the “largest deportation effort in the history of our country” and called for using the National Guard and domestic police forces in the effort.

Reuters contributed to this report.