Trump said U.S.-China trade deal is ‘done’
After two days of talks in London, President Trump said yesterday that the U.S. and China had struck a deal to roll back some of the punitive measures they had taken against each other’s economies in recent months.
Under the agreement, China would relax its restrictions on shipments of rare earth minerals and magnets critical for some U.S. manufacturers. In return, the U.S. would not impose visa restrictions on Chinese students and would relax limits it had placed on some U.S. exports. The full details of the agreement were not immediately released.
“OUR DEAL WITH CHINA IS DONE, SUBJECT TO FINAL APPROVAL WITH PRESIDENT XI AND ME,” Trump wrote on social media. “RELATIONSHIP IS EXCELLENT!”
Context: Economic tensions between the U.S. and China spiraled after Trump announced expansive tariffs in April. The escalation threatened businesses in both countries and risked empty shelves in American stores later this year.
Tariffs: The levies between the two countries will remain unchanged, and a 90-day pause in implementing some of the tariffs will expire in August. The U.S. trade representative said that the two sides would remain in contact but that another meeting had not yet been scheduled.
Analysis: “From what we know of the agreement, it appears to merely unwind the damage and escalation from the president’s own trade war,” my colleague Ana Swanson, who covers trade and international economics, told me. “They haven’t yet made any progress toward a new trade deal.”
Rare earths: China, which controls the world’s supply of rare earth metals and magnets, has been trying not to overplay its hand during negotiations with the U.S., Keith Bradsher, our Beijing bureau chief, writes.
U.S. cities prepared for more protests
After days of demonstrations against immigration raids led Trump to send troops to Los Angeles, U.S. cities from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast are seeing protests of their own.
Protests were expected in New York City; Raleigh, N.C.; Eugene, Ore.; Seattle; St. Louis; and San Antonio. In Washington, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Senate hearing that the same legal authorities the Pentagon had used to send nearly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles could be employed in other cities “if there are riots in place where law enforcement officers feel threatened.” We have updates.
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Netanyahu faced pressure over possible vote in Parliament
Israel’s opposition parties threatened yesterday to bring a motion to dissolve Parliament to a vote, a move that could lead to the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government and could raise the prospect of early elections.
If the motion passes, it is unlikely that the government would fall immediately, and a final vote could still take months. The opposition parties are exploiting a fight within the governing coalition over exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men from compulsory military service.
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After a year of blasting K-pop, news and propaganda across the border into North Korea, South Korea has switched off its loudspeakers.
It’s one of the first concrete steps taken by the new president, Lee Jae-myung, to improve ties with the North. Military officials were monitoring the border to see if the North would reciprocate by putting a stop to broadcasts of its own eerie noises.
This A.I. company wants to take your job
Years ago, most tech executives had the decency to lie about efforts to replace workers with artificial intelligence. That is starting to change: An A.I. startup from San Francisco called Mechanize has the audacious, public goal of automating white-collar jobs as fast as possible.
Mechanize’s approach is based on reinforcement learning — the same method used to train a computer to play the board game Go nearly a decade ago. Because most jobs involve doing more than one task, the company created training environments for its A.I. models — essentially elaborate tests used to teach them what to do in a given scenario.
But don’t panic yet. The company’s founders say it will take 10 to 30 years before A.I. comes for our jobs.
Read more from our tech columnist Kevin Roose.
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Content Source: www.nytimes.com