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    China Condemns JD Vance’s ‘Chinese Peasants’ Comment

    Beijing has denounced Vice President JD Vance’s rhetoric as “ignorant” after he said the United States was borrowing money from “Chinese peasants” in a television interview last week.“China’s position on Sino-U.S. economic and trade relations has been made very clear,” said Lin Jian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, during a news conference on Tuesday. “It is surprising and sad to hear the vice president say such ignorant and impolite words.”China has remained defiant in the face of the Trump administration’s tariffs and the latest threat from President Trump of an additional 50 percent tariff on Chinese goods unless Beijing reverses its retaliatory levies on U.S. imports. China’s Ministry of Commerce on Tuesday accused the United States of “blackmail,” and said that Beijing would “fight to the end.”In an interview with Fox News last week, Mr. Vance defended the Trump administration’s sweeping global tariffs, asking what the “globalist economy” has given the United States.Answering his own question, Mr. Vance said America was “incurring a huge amount of debt to buy things that other countries make” for its market. “We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture,” he said.Mr. Trump’s new policies, condemned by many international leaders, have wrought havoc on financial markets and spurred experts to issue warnings about inflation.The spiraling trade war between the two countries is poised to be costly to Americans, who last year purchased $440 billion of goods from China, making the country the second-largest source of imports after Mexico.Gillian Wong More

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    Some Calm Returns to Asian Markets Even as Trade Tensions Escalate

    Stocks rise in China after Beijing announces support measures a day after market plunges triggered by tariffs imposed by President Trump.After three days of global market turmoil not seen since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, stocks in Asia regained a measure of calm on Tuesday despite little let up in the escalating trade tensions caused by President Trump’s tariffs.Before markets opened in China, the government unleashed a series of measures to stabilize stocks. In turn, share prices in Hong Kong, a day after plunging 13.2 percent, rose 2 percent. Benchmarks in mainland China ticked higher, recovering from big declines the day before.In Japan, the Nikkei 225, a key benchmark in Japan, gained 6 percent, recouping a portion of the previous days losses. The uptick in sentiment followed comments made on Monday by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said he would soon begin discussions with the Japanese government regarding tariffs.The Kospi index rose in South Korea rose about 1.5 percent.Markets around the world were unmoored last week by Mr. Trump’s announcement of broad new tariffs — a base tax of 10 percent on American imports, plus significantly higher rates on dozens of other countries. Countries have responded with tariffs of their own on U.S. goods, or with threats of retaliation. China retaliated forcefully on Friday, matching a new 34 percent tariff with one of its own on many American imports.In the United States on Monday, the S&P 500 fell 0.2 percent after tumultuous trading that at one point pulled the benchmark into bear market territory, or a drop of 20 percent or more from its recent high. S&P futures, indicating how markets might perform when they reopen for trading on Wednesday in New York, were 1.5 percent higher.Wall Street executives and analysts are growing increasingly worried that escalating trade tensions could do lasting damage to the global economy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    China Accuses U.S. of Blackmail After Trump Threatens More Tariffs

    The country’s commerce ministry called President Trump’s threat to escalate tariffs on China by another 50 percent “blackmail.”China lashed out at the United States on Tuesday after President Trump demanded that Beijing rescind its retaliatory tariffs or face an additional 50 percent U.S. levy, calling his threat “blackmail,” as tensions between the two major powers rose.The Ministry of Commerce, without referring to the American president by name, said that Beijing had noted that the United States had threatened to impose a further 50 percent tariff on China. It said that Beijing would take countermeasures to safeguard its interests.“The U.S. threat to escalate tariffs on China is a mistake on top of a mistake, which once again exposes the blackmail nature of the United States,” the ministry’s statement said. “China will never accept it. If the United States insists on its own way, China will fight to the end.”China had announced last week that it would match Mr. Trump’s tariffs by imposing a retaliatory 34 percent tax on imports from America. The latest escalation that Mr. Trump described on Monday, if imposed, could bring the U.S. tariff on Chinese goods to 104 percent. For some products, though, the rate is likely to be much higher because of levies that date back to Mr. Trump’s first term. Mr. Trump also threatened to halt any further negotiations.American consumers last year bought $440 billion of goods from China, making it the second-largest source of U.S. imports after Mexico. Taken together, it could prove costly for American importers bringing in clothing, cellphones, chemicals and machinery from China.China said that the United States should cancel all unilateral tariffs against China, “stop suppressing China’s economy and trade, and properly resolve differences with China through equal dialogue on the basis of mutual respect.”China has been trying for months to engage in high-level talks with the Trump administration to try to lay the ground for a potential summit between Mr. Trump and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. But despite Mr. Trump saying earlier this year that he was open to engaging with Mr. Xi, Beijing has struggled to receive much of a response from the White House.Berry Wang More

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    Read the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Venezuelan Migrants

    Cite as: 604 U. S.
    (2025)
    9
    SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
    whether its March 15 deportations complied with the Dis-
    trict Court’s orders, it simultaneously sought permission to
    resume summary deportations under the Proclamation.
    The District Court, first, denied the Government’s motion
    to vacate its temporary restraining order, rejecting the as-
    sertion that “the President’s authority and discretion under
    the [Alien Enemies Act] is not a proper subject for judicial
    scrutiny.” App. to BIO 71a. At the very least, the District
    Court concluded, the plaintiffs were “likely to succeed” on
    their claim that, “before they may be deported, they are en-
    titled to individualized hearings to determine whether the
    Act applies to them at all.” 2025 WL 890401, *2. The D. C.
    Circuit, too, denied the Government a requested stay and
    kept in place the District Court’s pause on deportations un-
    der the Alien Enemies Act pending further proceedings.
    2025 WL 914682, *1 (per curiam) (Mar. 26, 2025).
    It is only this Court that sees reason to vacate, for the
    second time this week, a temporary restraining order
    standing “on its last legs.” Department of Education, 604
    U. S., at (JACKSON, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 1). Not
    content to wait until tomorrow, when the District Court will
    have a chance to consider full preliminary injunction brief-
    ing at a scheduled hearing, this Court intervenes to relieve
    the Government of its obligation under the order.
    II
    Begin with that upon which all nine Members of this
    Court agree. The Court’s order today dictates, in no uncer-
    tain terms, that “individual[s] subject to detention and re-
    moval under the [Alien Enemies Act are] entitled to judicial
    review’ as to ‘questions of interpretation and constitution-
    ality’ of the Act as well as whether he or she ‘is in fact an
    alien enemy fourteen years of age or older.”” Ante, at 2
    (quoting Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U. S. 160, 163–164, 172,
    n. 17 (1948)). Therefore, under today’s order, courts below More

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    Why Did Wall Street Get Trump So Wrong?

    Donald Trump’s 2024 election sent many finance types into spasms of anticipatory ecstasy as they imagined freedom from regulations, taxes and unfamiliar pronouns. “Bankers and financiers say Trump’s victory has emboldened those who chafed at ‘woke doctrine’ and felt they had to self-censor or change their language to avoid offending younger colleagues, women, minorities or disabled people,” The Financial Times reported a few days before Trump’s inauguration. It quoted one leading banker crowing — anonymously — about finally being able to use slurs like “retard” again. The vibes had shifted; the animal spirits were loose.“We’re stepping into the most pro-growth, pro-business, pro-American administration I’ve perhaps seen in my adult lifetime,” gushed the hedge fund manager Bill Ackman in December.One Wall Street veteran, however, understood the risk an unleashed Trump posed to the economy. After Trump’s victory in November, Peter Berezin, chief global strategist at BCA Research, which provides macroeconomic research to major financial institutions, estimated that the chance of a recession had climbed to 75 percent. “The prospect of an escalation of the trade war is likely to depress corporate investment while lowering real household disposable income,” said a BCA report.The surprising thing isn’t that Berezin saw the Trump tariff crisis coming, but that so many of his peers didn’t. You don’t have to be a sophisticated financial professional, after all, to understand that Trump believes, firmly and ardently, in taxing imports, and he thinks any country that sells more goods to America than it buys must be ripping us off. All you had to do was read the news or listen to Trump’s own words. Yet Berezin was an outlier; most of the people who make a living off their financial acumen had less understanding of Trump’s priorities than a casual viewer of MSNBC.On Monday, as stocks whipsawed on shifting news and rumors about the tariffs, I spoke to Berezin, who is based in Montreal, about how Wall Street had gotten Trump so wrong. He told me that many investors who pride themselves on their savvy are in fact just creatures of the herd. “All these cognitive biases that amateur retail investors are subject to, the Wall Street pros, are, if anything, even more subject to them because they’ve got career risk associated with bucking the trend,” he said.People in finance, said Berezin, are more likely to be punished for being too cautious and pessimistic than for being too hopeful and aggressive. Last year, for instance, a famed strategist named Marko Kolanovic left JPMorgan Chase abruptly when his gloomy predictions about 2023 and 2024 turned out to be wrong, or least premature. Mike Wilson, also known for his bearishness, stepped down from his post as chair of Morgan Stanley’s Global Investment Committee, though he stayed with the company. “You don’t get fired for being bullish, but you do get fired for being bearish on Wall Street,” said Berezin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    El discurso de Trump sobre un tercer mandato desafía la Constitución y la democracia

    La 22.ª Enmienda es clara: el presidente de EE. UU. tiene que renunciar a su cargo tras su segundo mandato. Pero la negativa de Trump a aceptarlo sugiere hasta dónde está dispuesto a llegar para mantenerse en el poder.Después de que el presidente Donald Trump dijera el año pasado que quería ser dictador por un día, insistió en que solo estaba bromeando. Ahora dice que podría intentar aferrarse al poder incluso cuando la Constitución estipula que debe renunciar a él, y esta vez, insiste en que no está bromeando.Puede que sí y puede que no. A Trump le gusta alborotar el avispero y sacar de quicio a los críticos. Hablar de un tercer mandato inconstitucional distrae de otras noticias y retrasa el momento en que se le considere como un presidente saliente. Sin duda, algunos en su propio bando lo consideran una broma, mientras los líderes republicanos se ríen de ello y los ayudantes de la Casa Blanca se burlan de los periodistas por tomárselo demasiado en serio.Pero el hecho de que Trump haya introducido la idea en la conversación nacional ilustra la incertidumbre sobre el futuro del sistema constitucional estadounidense, casi 250 años después de que el país obtuviera la independencia. Más que en ningún otro momento en generaciones, se cuestiona el compromiso del presidente con los límites al poder y el Estado de derecho, y sus críticos temen que el país se encamine por una senda oscura.Después de todo, Trump ya intentó una vez aferrarse al poder desafiando la Constitución, cuando trató de anular las elecciones de 2020 a pesar de haber perdido. Más tarde pidió la “rescisión” de la Constitución para volver a la Casa Blanca sin una nueva elección. Y en las 11 semanas transcurridas desde que reasumió el cargo, ha presionado los límites del poder ejecutivo más que ninguno de sus predecesores modernos.“En mi opinión, esto es la culminación de lo que ya ha empezado, que es un esfuerzo metódico por desestabilizar y socavar nuestra democracia para poder asumir un poder mucho mayor”, dijo en una entrevista el representante Daniel Goldman, demócrata por Nueva York y consejero principal durante el primer juicio político a Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Justice Dept. Tries to Use Executive Privilege to Muzzle Fired Pardon Attorney

    Senior officials at the Justice Department are trying to use executive privilege to prevent a lawyer dismissed from the department from testifying to Congress on Monday about the details of a disagreement with supervisors about restoring the gun rights of Mel Gibson, the actor and prominent supporter of President Trump.In a letter reviewed by The New York Times, a lawyer in the office of Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, warned Elizabeth G. Oyer, the Justice Department’s former pardon attorney, that she was “not authorized to disclose” records about the firearms rights issue to lawmakers.A lawyer for Ms. Oyer responded with his own missive, accusing the department of trying to intimidate a whistle-blower on the cusp of a congressional hearing.While the facts of the dispute are limited to a relatively narrow issue, the potential ripple effects could be far-reaching. The administration has already fired dozens of career prosecutors, some of whom have spoken publicly about their experiences, while others may yet still.The new conflict began Friday night, when Ms. Oyer learned that deputy U.S. Marshals were being sent to her home to deliver the Justice Department’s letter. After Ms. Oyer assured the department she had received the letter via email, the deputies’ delivery was canceled.Her lawyer, Michael Bromwich, noted in his letter to Mr. Blanche that Ms. Oyer’s teenage son was home alone at the time.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What Is a Bear Market? Are We in One?

    President Trump’s global tariffs have sent stock markets worldwide into a tailspin, and the S&P 500 on Monday entered bear market territory for the first time since 2022.Mr. Trump has seemed unmoved by the decline. He signaled on Monday that he had no plans to back off on tariffs, insisting that they would bring in “billions of dollars” in revenue and that other countries had been “abusing” the United States with their trade policies.Here is what to know about a bear market.What is a bear market?A bear market is a Wall Street term for a sustained market downturn, when a stock index falls 20 percent from its last peak.The 20 percent threshold signals investor pessimism about the future of the economy.Are we in a bear market now?The S&P 500, the benchmark U.S. stock index, opened lower on Monday. The index was already down 17.4 percent from its last high, on Feb. 19, and if it closes Monday’s trading with a loss of at least 3.1 percent, that would tip it into a bear market.Analysts at Morgan Stanley have warned that an even steeper drop is possible. Goldman Sachs on Monday slashed its forecast for economic growth, citing a growing risk of a U.S. recession next year.The Nasdaq Composite Index, as well as the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies that are more vulnerable to the economic outlook, are already in a bear market.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More