China’s Foreign Ministry and the Chinese embassy have both said they are ‘ready to fight till the end’ after Donald Trump doubled the tariff on all Chinese imports from 10 percent to 20 percent.
After initially implementing the 10 percent tariff against China in early February, Trump increased the tariffs on March 4, on the same day he brought in 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada.
The POTUS has said his tariffs are intended to ‘combat the extraordinary threat to U.S. national security, including our public health posed by unchecked drug trafficking’, but China quickly hit back this week by adding 10-15 percent tariffs on certain agriculture imports from the US.
Trump’s tariffs impact China, Mexico, and Canada (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The 15 percent tariffs impact popular products such as chicken, wheat, corn, and cotton imports from the US, while the 10 percent tariffs impact the likes of pork, beef, aquatic products, fruits, vegetables, and dairy products.
Other moves targeting the US include stopping lumber imports and suspending US permits to export soybeans to the country.
Alfredo Montufar-Helu, head of the China Center for the Conference Board, said the tariffs it had imposed off the back of Trump’s action were a ‘restrained, targeted approach aimed at causing pain to those industries that matter the most to the supporters of the Trump administration’.
Now, the Chinese embassy has doubled down as it shared a statement on Twitter suggesting it was ready for ‘war’.
The post read: “If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.”
The Chinese embassy shared comments saying it was ‘ready to fight’ (X/@ChineseEmbinUS)
The tweet echoes comments made by Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, on March 4, when he said China would ‘fight till the end’ if the US insisted on ‘waging a tariff war, trade war or any other kind of war’.
Jian continued: “I want to reiterate that the Chinese people have never feared evil or ghosts, nor have we ever bowed to hegemony or bullying. Pressure, coercion and threats are not the right ways to engage with China. Trying to exert maximum pressure on China is a miscalculation and a mistake.”
China has now set itself an economic growth target of ‘around five percent’ for this year, which it hopes to meet by making domestic demand the ‘main engine and anchor’ of its growth.
The country has previously leaned on exports to help meet its five percent target.
Euphoria star Hunter Schafer reveals new passport now lists her as different gender following Donald Trump’s instatement
Hunter Schafer said she had a ‘harsh reality check’ after her gender was changed on her passport thanks to Donald Trump
Euphoria star Hunter Schafer has shared that her gender has been changed to male on her new passport against her will.
On President Donald Trump’s first day back in the Oval Office (January 20), he signed an executive order titled ‘Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government’.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order which rules that only two genders will be identified by the US Government (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
It meant that the trans community would no longer be recognized by the state and that all newly printed passports will reflect the change – much to the bemusement of 26-year-old Schafer, who has had female gender markers on her documents for the last 10 years.
Taking to TikTok, she shared how she lost her passport and so began the application for a new one.
“Last year, when I was filming in Barcelona, our car got broken into, and my bag got stolen, and inside of that was my passport, which was supposed to last me like, you know, up until my 30s, and so I got an emergency passport, which was very simple at the time,” she explained.
“It’s basically just a copy of my old passport, but temporary and only supposed to be used within the year. So as soon as I got back to the States, I had to get this fixed and get it replaced with a real, proper passport, which I went to the federal Passport Agency today in LA and did.
Hunter Schafer passport identifies her as male
“I’ve had to do this one time before, no part of the process was different. I filled everything out just like I normally would. I put female, and when it was picked up today and I opened it up, they had changed the marker to male.”
Schafer, who played Tigris in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, told fans of her shock – believing Trump’s attack on the transgender community was ‘all talk’
She continued: “I never had my birth certificate changed. So this has led me to believe that I think the agencies who are in charge of passports and this sort of thing are now required to cross reference birth certificates, or, I don’t know exactly what or what changed, as far as the processing goes.
“But this is the first time this has happened to me since I changed my gender marker. We’re coming up on a decade now, or something, and I do believe it is a direct result of the administration our country is currently operating under.”
The Euphoria star, who played Jules Vaughn in the show, went on to compare the Trump administration to that of a fascist movement before stating that she was ‘scared’ of what is to come.
Before explaining that her passport identifying her as a male doesn’t bother her, other than the unnecessary conversations she predicts having with border patrol agents about it.
“It doesn’t change really anything about me or my transness. However, it does make life a little harder,” Schafer said.
“I just want to say trans people are beautiful. We are never going to stop existing. I’m never gonna stop being trans. A letter and a passport can’t change that, and f**k this administration.”
