BEIJING, April 2: China raised import duties on a $3 billion list of US pork, fruit and other products Monday in an escalating tariff dispute with President Donald Trump that companies worry might depress global commerce.

The Finance Ministry said it was responding to a US tariff hike on steel and aluminum that took effect March 23. But a bigger clash looms over Trump’s approval of possible higher duties on nearly $50 billion of Chinese goods in a separate argument over technology policy.

The tariff spat is one aspect of wide-ranging tensions between Washington and Beijing over China’s multibillion-dollar trade surplus with the United States and its policies on technology, industry development and access to its state-dominated economy.

Forecasters say the immediate impact should be limited, but investors worry the global recovery might be set back if it prompts other governments to raise import barriers. Those fears temporarily depressed financial markets, though stocks have recovered some of their losses.

On Monday, stock market indexes in Tokyo and Shanghai were up 0.5 percent at midmorning.

Beijing faces complaints by Washington, the European Union and other trading partners that it hampers market access despite its free-trading pledges and is flooding global markets with improperly low-priced steel and aluminum. But the EU, Japan and other governments criticized Trump’s unilateral move as disruptive.

The United States buys little Chinese steel and aluminum following earlier tariff hikes to offset what Washington says is improper subsidies. Still, economists expected Beijing to respond to avoid looking weak in a high-profile dispute.

Effective Monday, Beijing raised tariffs on pork, aluminum scrap and some other products by 25 percent, the Finance Ministry said. A 15 percent tariff was imposed on apples, almonds and some other goods.

The tariff hike has “has seriously damaged our interests,” said a Finance Ministry statement.

“Our country advocates and supports the multilateral trading system,” said the statement. China’s tariff increase “is a proper measure adopted by our country using World Trade Organization rules to protect our interests.”

The White House didn’t respond to a message from The Associated Press on Sunday seeking comment.

China’s government said earlier its imports of those goods last year totaled $3 billion.

The latest Chinese move targets farm areas, many of which voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

US farmers sent nearly $20 billion of goods to China in 2017. The American pork industry sent $1.1 billion in products, making China the No. 3 market for U.S. pork.

“American politicians better realize sooner rather than later that China would never submit if the US launched a trade war,” said the Global Times, a newspaper published by the ruling Communist Party.

Washington granted EU, South Korea and some other exporters, but not ally Japan, exemptions to the steel and aluminum tariffs on March 22. European governments had threatened to retaliate by raising duties on American bourbon, peanut butter and other goods.

Beijing has yet to say how it might respond to Trump’s March 22 order approving possible tariff hikes in response to complaints China steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology.

Trump ordered US trade officials to bring a WTO case challenging Chinese technology licensing. It proposed 25 percent tariffs on Chinese products including aerospace, communications technology and machinery and said Washington will step up restrictions on Chinese investment in key US technology sectors.

Trump administration officials have identified as potential targets 1,300 product lines worth about $48 billion. That list will then be open to a 30-day comment period for businesses.

Beijing reported a trade surplus of $275.8 billion with the United States last year, or two-thirds of its global total. Washington reports different figures that put the gap at a record $375.2 billion. AP

BEIJING, Nov 10: President Donald Trump set aside his blistering rhetoric in favor of friendly overtures to China on Thursday, trying to flatter his hosts into establishing a more balanced trade relationship and doing more to blunt North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Winding down his two days in Beijing, Trump suggested that if the US and China jointly took on the world’s problems, “I believe we can solve almost all of them, and probably all of them.”

In the name of furthering that relationship, Trump largely shelved his campaign complaints about China, at least in public. He focused on exhorting Beijing to help with North Korea, an effort expected again to take center stage at an international summit in Vietnam on Friday.

The Chinese rolled out a lavish welcome for the American president. Trump returned the kindness, heaping praise on China’s Xi Jinping and predicting the two powers would work around entrenched differences. On Twitter later, Trump called his meetings with Xi “very productive on both trade and the subject of North Korea.”

On trade, Trump criticized the “very one-sided and unfair” relationship between the US and China. But unlike his approach during the campaign, when he castigated China for what he contended were inappropriate trade practices, Trump said Thursday that he didn’t blame the Chinese for having taken advantage of the US in the past.

Trump said China “must immediately address the unfair trade practices” that drive a “shockingly” large trade deficit, along with barriers to market access, forced technology transfers and intellectual property theft.

“But I don’t blame China,” he said. “After all, who can blame a country for being able to take advantage of another country for the benefit of its citizens?”

To applause, Trump said, “I give China great credit.”

Reacting from afar, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said Trump’s comments “make the United States look weak and as if we are bowing to China’s whim. … Instead of giving China credit for stealing American jobs, the president should be holding China accountable.” Menendez, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is on trial for bribery.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered a blunt assessment of China’s trade surplus with the United States, which in October widened by 12.2 percent from a year earlier to $26.6 billion. The total surplus with the United States for the first 10 months of the year was $223 billion.

“I think the best way to characterize it is that while we appreciate the long hours and the effort that our Chinese counterparts have put into those trade discussions, quite frankly in the grand scheme of a $300- to $500-billion trade deficit, the things that have been achieved are pretty small,” Tillerson told reporters in Beijing.

Tillerson also acknowledged there were differences in “tactics and the timing and how far to go with pressure” on North Korea. But he insisted that the two countries shared common objectives.

“There is no disagreement on North Korea,” he said.

The comments by Trump and his top diplomat came after lengthy meetings with Xi. The day included announcements that the US and China had signed agreements valued at more than $250 billion for products including US-made jet engines, auto parts, liquefied natural gas and beef.

Such contract signings, a fixture of foreign leaders’ visits to Beijing, are intended to defuse complaints about China’s trade policies.

Xi promised a more open business environment for foreign companies in China and said his country was committed to further opening its economy to outside investment.

“China will not close its doors” and will open them “even wider,” he said, pledging that foreign companies in China, including American ones, would find the market “more open, more transparent and more orderly.”

It is unclear how far China will go to fulfill its pledges. Previous U.S. administrations have hailed market-opening promises only to be left disappointed.

Before arriving in China, Trump had delivered a stern message to Beijing, using an address in South Korea to call on China, North Korea’s biggest trade partner, to do more to confront and isolate the North.

Trump on Thursday appeared far more conciliatory, thanking China for its efforts and saying he’d been encouraged by his conversations.

“China can fix this problem easily. And quickly. And I am calling on China and your great president to hopefully work on it very hard,” Trump said. “If he works on it hard it will happen.”

Trump also was feted at a state dinner that featured a video montage of the president’s visit, as well as footage of his granddaughter, Arabella, the daughter of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, singing a traditional Chinese song in Mandarin.

On Friday, Trump was scheduled to stop in Da Nang, Vietnam, for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference — the first of multiple summits he’ll attend on his first trip to Asia as president.

He may meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the conference. Tillerson said Thursday the two sides were still discussing whether they had “sufficient substance” to talk about in such a meeting. AP

SEOUL, Sept 4: Following U.S. warnings to North Korea of a “massive military response,” South Korea on Monday fired missiles into the sea to simulate an attack on the North’s main nuclear test site a day after Pyongyang detonated its largest ever nuclear test explosion.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry also said Monday that North Korea appeared to be planning a future missile launch, possibly of an ICBM, to show off its claimed ability to target the United States with nuclear weapons, though it was unclear when this might happen.

The heated words from the United States and the military maneuvers in South Korea are becoming familiar responses to North Korea’s rapid, as-yet unchecked pursuit of a viable arsenal of nuclear-tipped missiles that can strike the United States. The most recent, and perhaps most dramatic, advancement came Sunday in an underground test of what leader Kim Jong Un’s government claimed was a hydrogen bomb, the North’s sixth nuclear test since 2006.

Chang Kyung-soo, an official with South Korea’s Defense Ministry, told lawmakers that Seoul was seeing preparations in the North for an ICBM test but didn’t provide details about how officials had reached that assessment. Chang also said the yield from the latest nuclear detonation appeared to be about 50 kilotons, which would mark a “significant increase” from North Korea’s past nuclear tests.

In a series of tweets, President Donald Trump threatened to halt all trade with countries doing business with the North, a veiled warning to China, and faulted South Korea for what he called “talk of appeasement.”

South Korea’s military said its live-fire exercise was meant to “strongly warn” Pyongyang. The drill involved F-15 fighter jets and the country’s land-based “Hyunmoo” ballistic missiles firing into the Sea of Japan.

The target was set considering the distance to the North’s test site and the exercise was aimed at practicing precision strikes and cutting off reinforcements, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Each new North Korean missile and nuclear test gives Pyongyang’s scientists invaluable information that allows big jumps in capability. North Korea is thought to have a growing arsenal of nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of those bombs.

Both diplomacy and severe sanctions have failed to check the North’s decades-long march to nuclear mastery.

In Washington, Trump, asked by a reporter if he would attack the North, said: “We’ll see.” No U.S. military action appeared imminent, and the immediate focus appeared to be on ratcheting up economic penalties, which have had little effect thus far.

In briefs remarks after a White House meeting with Trump and other national security officials, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters that America does not seek the “total annihilation” of the North, but then added somberly, “We have many options to do so.”

Mattis said the U.S. will answer any threat from the North with a “massive military response — a response both effective and overwhelming.”

Mattis also said the international community is unified in demanding the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and that Kim should know Washington’s commitment to Japan and South Korea is unshakeable.

The precise strength of the North’s underground nuclear explosion has yet to be determined. South Korea’s weather agency said the artificial earthquake caused by the explosion was five times to six times stronger than tremors generated by the North’s previous five tests.

Sunday’s detonation builds on recent North Korean advances that include test launches in July of two ICBMs. The North says its missile development is part of a defensive effort to build a viable nuclear deterrent that can target U.S. cities.

North Korea has made a stunning jump in progress for its nuclear and missile program since Kim rose to power following his father’s death in late 2011. The North followed its two tests of Hwasong-14 ICBMs, which, when perfected, could target large parts of the United States, by threatening to launch a salvo of its Hwasong-12 intermediate range missiles toward the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam in August.

It flew a Hwasong-12 over northern Japan last week, the first such overflight by a missile capable of carrying nukes, in a launch Kim described as a “meaningful prelude” to containing Guam, the home of major U.S. military facilities, and vowed to launch more ballistic missile tests targeting the Pacific.

Ahead of the North’s test, photos released by the North Korean government showed Kim talking with his lieutenants as he observed a silver, peanut-shaped device that was apparently the purported thermonuclear weapon destined for an ICBM. The images were taken without outside journalists present and could not be independently verified. What appeared to be the nose cone of a missile could also be seen in one photo, and another showed a diagram on the wall behind Kim of a bomb mounted inside a cone.

The Arms Control Association in the United States said the explosion appeared to produce a yield in excess of 100 kilotons of TNT equivalent, which it said strongly suggests the North tested a high-yield but compact nuclear weapon that could be launched on a missile of intermediate or intercontinental range.

Beyond the science of the blast, North Korea’s accelerating push to field a nuclear weapon that can target all of the United States is creating political complications for the U.S. as it seeks to balance resolve with reassurance to allies that Washington will uphold its decades-long commitment to deter nuclear attack on South Korea and Japan.

That is why some questioned Trump’s jab at South Korea. He tweeted that Seoul is finding that its “talk of appeasement” will not work. The North Koreans, he added, “only understand one thing,” implying military force might be required. The U.S. has about 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea and is obliged by treaty to defend it in the event of war.

Trump also suggested putting more pressure on China, the North’s patron for many decades and a vital U.S. trading partner, in hopes of persuading Beijing to exert more effective leverage on its neighbor. Trump tweeted that the U.S. is considering “stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea.” Such a halt would be radical. The U.S. imports about $40 billion in goods a month from China, North Korea’s main commercial partner.

Experts have questioned whether the North has gone too far down the nuclear road to continue pushing for a denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, an Obama administration policy goal still embraced by Trump’s White House.

“Denuclearization is not a viable U.S. policy goal,” said Richard Fontaine, president of the Center for a New American Security, but neither should the U.S. accept North Korea as a nuclear power. “We should keep denuclearization as a long-term aspiration, but recognize privately that it’s unachievable anytime soon.”AP

BEDMINSTER, Aug 12: President Donald Trump on Friday issued fresh threats of swift and forceful retaliation against nuclear North Korea, declaring the U.S. military “locked and loaded” and warning that the communist country’s leader “will regret it fast” if he takes any action against U.S. territories or allies.

The warnings came in a cascade of unscripted statements throughout the day, each ratcheting up a rhetorical standoff between the two nuclear nations. The president appeared to draw another red line that would trigger a U.S. attack against North Korea and “big, big trouble” for its leader, Kim Jong Un. Trump’s comments, however, did not appear to be backed by significant military mobilization on either side of the Pacific, and an important, quiet diplomatic channel remained open.

“If he utters one threat in the form of an overt threat — which by the way he has been uttering for years and his family has been uttering for years — or he does anything with respect to Guam or anyplace else that’s an American territory or an American ally, he will truly regret it and he will regret it fast,” Trump told reporters at his New Jersey golf resort.

Asked if the U.S. was going to war, he said cryptically, “I think you know the answer to that.”

The compounding threats came in a week in which longstanding tensions between the countries risked abruptly boiling over. New United Nations sanctions condemning the North’s rapidly developing nuclear program drew fresh ire and threats from Pyongyang. Trump responded by vowing to rain down “fire and fury” if challenged. The North then threatened to lob missiles near Guam, a tiny U.S. territory some 2,000 miles from Pyongyang.

Tough talk aside, talks between senior U.S. and North Korean diplomats continue through a back channel previously used to negotiate the return of Americans held in North Korea. The talks have expanded to address the deterioration of the relationship. They haven’t quelled tensions, but could be a foundation for a more diplomacy, according to U.S. officials and others briefed on the process. They weren’t authorized to discuss the confidential exchanges and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump on Friday sought to project military strength, only dialing back slightly throughout the day.

He began with a morning tweet: “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!”

He later retweeted a posting from U.S. Pacific Command that showed B-1B Lancer bomber planes on Guam that “stand ready to fulfill USFK’s #FightTonight mission if called upon to do so.” Such declarations, however, don’t indicate a new, more aggressive posture. “Fight tonight” has long been the motto of U.S. forces in South Korea to show they’re always ready for combat on the Korean Peninsula.

Trump declined to explain the boast of military readiness when asked by reporters later in the day at an event highlighting workforce development programs. He also brushed away calls for caution from world leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel.

“I don’t see a military solution and I don’t think it’s called for,” Merkel said Friday, declining to say whether Germany would stand with the U.S. in a military conflict with North Korea. She called on the U.N. Security Council to continue to address the crisis.

“I think escalating the rhetoric is the wrong answer,” Merkel added.

“Let her speak for Germany,” Trump said, when asked about the comment. “Perhaps she is referring to Germany. She’s certainly not referring to the United States, that I can tell you.”

By evening, after a briefing with top advisers and standing next to his secretary of state and U.N. ambassador, Trump suggested diplomacy could yet prevail.

“Hopefully it’ll all work out,” Trump said. “Nobody loves a peaceful solution better than President Trump.”

The president spoke later Friday with Guam Gov. Eddie Calvo, promising: “You are safe. We are with you a thousand percent.”

He also had a call with President Xi Jinping of China, North Korea’s main economic partner, who said all sides should avoid rhetoric or action that would worsen tensions on the Korean Peninsula, according to state broadcaster China Central Television.

The White House said both leaders agreed that North Korea must stop its “provocative and escalatory behavior.”

Trump has pushed China to do more to pressure North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons program.

Faced with perhaps his biggest international crisis as president, Trump has responded with an abundance of swagger and a lot of words. He’s held a series of freewheeling press conferences with reporters, answering complex and delicate questions apparently off the cuff. On Friday, he veered from North Korea to comments on politics. He even suggested he would consider military action against Venezuela, puzzling his military planners.

Trump announced he planned to hold another press conference in Washington Monday.

Behind the threats, U.S. officials insist there has been no new significant movement of troops, ships, aircraft or other assets to the region other than for long scheduled military exercises with South Korea.

American and South Korean officials said the exercises would happen as planned this month. North Korea claims they’re a rehearsal for war.

As it is, the U.S. has a robust military presence in the region, including six B-1 bombers in Guam and Air Force fighter jet units in South Korea, plus other assets across the Pacific Ocean and in the skies above. Military options range from nothing to a full-on conventional assault by air, sea and ground forces. Any order by the president could be executed quickly.

The U.S.-South Korea exercises are an annual event, but they come as Pyongyang says it’s readying a plan to fire off four medium-range missiles toward Guam, a U.S. territory and major military hub. The plan would be sent to Kim for approval just before or as the U.S.-South Korea drills begin.

Called Ulchi-Freedom Guardian, the exercises are expected to run Aug. 21-31 and involve tens of thousands of American and South Korean troops on the ground and in the sea and air. Washington and Seoul say the exercises are defensive in nature and crucial to deterring North Korean aggression.-AP

RIYADH, May 21: Even as his administration fights for its travel ban from several Muslim-majority countries, President Donald Trump is using the nation that is home to Islam’s holiest site as a backdrop to call for Muslim unity in the fight against terrorism.

Trump’s speech, the centerpiece of his two-day visit to Saudi Arabia, will address the leaders of 50 Muslim-majority countries to cast the challenge of extremism as a “battle between good and evil” and urge Arab leaders to “drive out the terrorists from your places of worship,” according to a draft of the speech obtained by The Associated Press.

Trump, whose campaign was frequently punctuated by bouts of anti-Islamic rhetoric, is poised to soften some of his language about Islam. Though during the campaign he repeatedly stressed the need to say the words “radical Islamic terrorism” and criticized his opponent, Hillary Clinton, for not doing so that phrase is not included in the draft.

The speech comes amid a renewed courtship of the United States’ Arab allies as Trump is set to have individual meetings with leaders of several nations, including Egypt and Qatar, before then participating in a roundtable with the Gulf Cooperation Council and joining Saudi King Salman in opening Riyadh’s new anti-terrorism center.

The address also notably refrains from mentioning democracy and human rights topics Arab leaders often view as US moralising in favor of the more limited goals of peace and stability.

“We are not here to lecture to tell other peoples how to live, what to do or who to be. We are here instead to offer partnership in building a better future for us all,” according to the copy of his speech.

Two different sources provided the AP with copies of the draft of his remarks, billed as a marquee speech of the trip.

The White House confirmed the draft was authentic, but cautioned the president had not yet signed off on the final product and that changes could be made.

Trump may seem an unlikely messenger to deliver an olive branch to the Muslim world.

During his campaign, he mused, “I think Islam hates us.” And only a week after taking office, he signed an executive order to ban immigrants from seven countries Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen from entering the United States, a decision that sparked widespread protests at the nation’s airports and demonstrations outside the White House.

That ban was blocked by the courts. A second order, which dropped Iraq from the list, is tied up in federal court and the federal government is appealing.

White House officials have said they consider Trump’s visit, and his keynote address, a counterweight to President Barack Obama’s debut speech to the Muslim world in 2009 in Cairo.-AP

WASHINGTON, May 2: After dropping a monster bomb on its fighters, then targeting its leader, the US military is looking to destroy the Islamic State group’s Afghan branch before battle-hardened reinforcements arrive from Syria and Iraq.

While US and Kabul government forces have mainly been combatting Taliban fighters since 2001, IS’s local offshoot — also known as Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K — has a stronghold in eastern Afghanistan.

First emerging in 2015, ISIS-K overran large parts of Nangarhar and Kunar provinces, near the Pakistan border, but their part in the Afghan conflict had been largely overshadowed by the operations against the Taliban.

Many Americans first heard of ISIS-K last month when the US dropped the “Mother Of All Bombs” on its Nangarhar bastion — an aerial munition that the Pentagon said was the biggest non-nuclear weapon it had ever used in combat.

US and Afghan forces then raided a compound last week close to the site of the bombing, with the Pentagon saying it believed it had killed ISIS-K’s leader Abdul Hasib during the operation.

Captain Bill Salvin, spokesman for US Forces-Afghanistan, said the local IS presence peaked at between 2,500 to 3,000 but that defections and recent battlefield losses had reduced their number to a maximum of 800.

“We have a very good chance of destroying them in 2017, making it very clear that when the ISIS fighters are destroyed elsewhere around the globe that this is not the place for you to come to plot your attacks,” Salvin told AFP.

US-backed fighters also appear to have IS on the ropes in Syria and Iraq, where an operation to wrest back control of the major northern city of Mosul has been ongoing since October.

But both the military and analysts acknowledge there is a danger of IS fighters heading to Afghanistan if they are forced out of Iraq and Syria.

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, said that while IS should ultimately be defeated in Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s timeline may be overly optimistic.

A definitive victory could take “a long time due, partly (due) to the proximity of Pakistan as well as the possible flow of fighters” from the Middle East as the “group loses sanctuaries there,” O’Hanlon told AFP.

The Taliban, which first emerged in the mid-1990s in southern Afghanistan, managed to conquer most of the country before its 2001 ouster with the help of a range of foreign jihadists, including Pakistanis, Saudis and Chechens.

Analysts say that as well as Afghans, ISIS-K includes disaffected Pakistani and Uzbek Islamists among its ranks who used to fight for the Taliban.

It first emerged as a significant player in Afghanistan in early 2015 when its fighters overran the Taliban in parts of the east and has subsequently claimed responsibility for a string of bomb attacks.

ISIS-K’s defeat would be an important victory for the US, which has struggled to boast of clear wins after forcing the Taliban out of Kabul in 2001 in the initial aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of the Long War Journal, said ISIS-K had “withstood multiple US-backed offensives over the past two years.”

But while their defeat would be a boost to the US, Roggio said the Taliban and their long-time Al-Qaeda allies were still a much bigger challenge.

“It’s not that they don’t pose a threat, but I would argue that the Taliban pose a far greater threat to the stability of Afghanistan,” Roggio told AFP.

“It would be basically winning a battle, but we are still losing the war, which is basically the story of Afghanistan since we’ve been involved there.”

America has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan. Most belong to a NATO mission to train and advise Afghan partner forces fighting the Taliban.AFP