The Duran Podcast - US-China tariff TRUCE. US-UK tariff DEAL

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

US-China tariff TRUCE. US-UK tariff DEAL

All right, Alexander, we have a tariff truce between the United States and China. And it looks like they have agreed for a 90-day truce in Switzerland, China, and the United States, and they lowered the tariffs by an equal amount, both sides. I believe, I want to say 115% was the agreement. They would both lower the tariffs, 115%. between both sides. I will look for that number. In the meantime, what are your thoughts on this truce?

And we'll talk a bit more about relations between the United States and China. And also, to wrap up the video, I would like your thoughts on the trade deal between the U.S. and the U.K. as well. I think that'll be a good way to end this video, since we're talking about tariffs and tariff deals. So your thoughts on the tariff truce. Now we'll get that number for you. Well, indeed.

A very interesting meeting took place in Switzerland at an undisclosed location. They wanted to keep the media well away, despite some attempts in the US media to argue otherwise. It's absolutely clear that it was the US that sought the deal. There's any doubt about that. I think the information on this is very clear. both Reuters and the Chinese government have confirmed this. The tariffs, as we've discussed in programs, were completely unsustainable. The utterly essential economic trade relationship between China and the United States

had come completely to a stop. what we had seen was no longer a protectionist economic policy, but rather an economic war and blockade being waged primarily by the United States against China, but China engaging in its own retaliation. And I think that this was certainly creating some problems for China, though I ought to say that contrary to what many people assume, China's external trade, its exports actually grew in April. They didn't fall because China was able to find other markets to compensate for losses in the American market. But undoubtedly, nonetheless, it would have caused problems for China. I mean, you know, the fact that they might have expanded their exports overall doesn't mean

that there weren't certain items for which America was the main market and which they weren't able to sell. So the Chinese are having serious problems. But there's evidence, there's a significant body of evidence that the administration was being warned by the big retailers in the United States that if this continued for very, very much longer, there would be problems in the United States as well. Shops would, the shell. and the shops will start to empty and that this needed to be brought back under control. So I think what's happened is that the United States made the first move. It contacted China. It said, look, we're prepared to bring down the tariffs. If you're prepared to bring down

the tariffs, there was a meeting. The meeting took place. There's been agreements apparently on bringing down the tariffs. You'll find out perhaps how much that they've agreed to bring them down to, and then the serious negotiations between China and the United States can begin. I think we are going to move definitely and conclusively towards a protectionist economic policy on the part of the United States, but we're no longer going to have an economic war between the United States and China. I've made it fairly clear. My own belief was that that was a misconceived idea. It is contrary to the views that the protectionists in the 19th century in the United States always enunciated. They always said that this kind of policy, you know, retaliatory tariffs

and all of that was a huge mistake. I think the United States is going to move to a policy of protectionism. I think China will accept it. I think the Chinese are diversified their economy in all kinds of ways, their trading relationships. Xi Jinping was in Moscow. He had a very good set of meetings with the Russians. He brought a massive economic delegation with him. They did all kinds of deals. It looks as if they've agreed the power of Siberia 2 will begin work on it will begin in 2027. So we're back to what we saw at the start of Trump's first term, a gradual economic. economic divorce rather than an economic war. That is my assessment of where we are today. Right. As part of the agreement, the U.S. will lower tariffs on Chinese goods to 30% from 145% to

China will reduce duties on U.S. imports to 10% from 125%. 150%. They agreed on the same amount. I imagine you're going to have a 90-day truce in which you're going to have both sides. now working together to finalize an agreement. I mean, it's going to take time to put all of this together. So basically what they said is very quickly, they said, you do 115%. I'll do 115%. And now we have 90 days. Maybe they'll extend that. Now we have some breathing room to finalize this divorce. We're never going to go back to 145 and 125% tariffs. I mean, that made no sense. That was particularly bad for the United States because, as I said, goods were running out. It's not great for China either.

30% tariffs on Chinese goods is a high set of tariffs. Probably that is going to be brought down as well over time. But we've put the economic war behind us. And we're back now to discussing an economic divorce. and an end to this economic war and, you know, a protectionist policy in the United States. We return, in other words, to reason. The whole issue was seized upon by some people. I'm going to say this, in the United States, who have very, very visceral attitudes towards China.

The whole thing got completely out of control. Now, as I said, it's been stabilized and hopefully we'll be back to a proper negotiation moving forward. I think Besant is one of the people that's very hostile. Oh, absolutely. To China. Besant. The other guy, Lutnik. Lutnik, absolutely.

I think they're all very hostile. They're all hostile to China. But the whole thing ran out of control. They did not expect China to retaliate by lifting its own tariffs. and cutting off rare earths in the way that it did. And as I said, that was an unsustainable position. And I think the United States realized it had to reverse it. And they've acted very quickly, and that's what they've done.

And I also think that their plan, they calculated that they would be able to sign a whole bunch of deals with other countries. And that would work in their favor. And it didn't happen like that. They were thinking, okay, we're going to go hard against China. But at the same time, we're going to sign deals with India, with South Korea, with Japan. At the end of the day, they ended up getting a deal with the UK because that's pretty much the only country that was willing to sign a quick deal.

Every other country was saying, no, we're not going to be pressed to do this. It's going to take time to put together a trade deal. So they turned to the UK. At the same time, China was engaging in very active diplomacy. Xi Jinping was going around the world, essentially, and he was meeting with world leaders and positioning China to diversify and to also expand its business. And in Russia, I think it became very clear that China is very much in need of Russia. because the narrative that we've always been getting from the collective West media is that

Russia needs China. Russia is the junior partner to China. I think now the way the world is shaken out, China needs Russia just as much as Russia needs China. Absolutely. I mean, in one respect, it's important to stress. China has a population 10 times bigger than Russia's. Its economy is much, much bigger. It has a very, very much bigger industrial base. And in some fields, but not all of them, it has a more advanced technological base. I mean, it's well ahead of Russia, for example, in chips. So the Russians do have a program with a plan to develop an advanced chips industry. And it may be that in say five years' time, that could change. But, you know, China is the bigger economy by far. Having said that, China is not a self-sufficient economy, which Russia is.

This is a fundamental point that people struggle perhaps to understand. Russia can trade with other part countries on its own terms because it produces its own food, It produces its own energy. It produces the whole range of manufactured goods, from civil aircraft to chips, to steel, to furniture, to wood products. And for that reason, the Russians are in a much stronger position ultimately to withstand trade shocks. I mean, if they're isolated, they can still get by. I'm not saying that they want to be isolated or that it would be good for them, but they can still get bud.

China cannot. China has to import. It has got quite a lot of raw materials, but it is very short of others. It needs to import food. It needs to import energy. It needs to import certain strategic minerals. and of course, who is the biggest exporter of all of those things. It is Russia.

So it is a much more evenly balanced relationship than many people understand. It is also a strategic relationship. Now, here you need to go back into history, which is, of course, something that when it comes to Chinese history, people often don't appreciate. but if you go through Chinese history, political and military crises in China usually begin in the north. It's China faces invasions from the north, from the Mongols, the Tartars, the various other people of the steplands. The fact, what changed all of that was when the Russian Empire basically get control.

of all of these territories. It stabilized China's northern regions, and it meant that China no longer has to fear that threat from the north. And of course, there was a brief period in the 60s and 70s when that changed. There was a very difficult relationship between the Soviet Union and China at that time, and China had to maintain enormous armed forces in northern China to counter the Soviets. of the Chinese economy, also, by the way, on the Soviet economy as well. But the point was that again, the de-escalation with the Soviet Union and with Russia that took place in the late 90s and early 90s, and sorry, late 80s and early 1990s, was, as the Chinese themselves say, a major factor in releasing resources which enabled China's economic to.

take off to take place. So China does not want that situation to change. It needs a friendly Russia on its northern borders. So it doesn't want a situation where Russia becomes what the neocons in Washington wanted to be. A vassal state of the United States or fragments on the U.S. establishes some kind of military presence on China's northern borders, isolating in China, cutting it off from supplies of raw materials, forcing China to, again, ramp up defense, its defense spending in northern China, even as it's facing a challenge in the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific. So for all of these reasons, the relationship with Russia for China is an extremely important

one. And we saw that play out over the course of the Victory Day celebrations. Xi Jinping came to Moscow, spent four days there, had intense meetings with Putin, came with a gigantic delegation, had a meeting, meetings, not just one-to-one meetings between Xi Jinping and Putin, but pretty much the entire Russian government was involved in these various meetings. So, as I said, power of Siberia, too, is happening. economic relationships are being developed. China, through Russia, acquires strategic depth in what is now clearly an adversarial relationship between China and the United States.

So that is immensely important for China. And of course, China is also developing relations with all kinds of other countries. It's developing close relations with us. It has strong relations with many African states. It's looking to establish good relations with some of the Latin American states. It imports agricultural products like soybeans from Brazil, for example. So it's also active in diplomacy in that kind of way.

So an adversarial relationship with the United States, a long-term economic divorce. or trade divorce with the United States, which also, by the way, a bit like Russia, has the potential eventually to become a mostly self-sufficient country. It isn't that at the moment because of the way in which the U.S. economy has been run. But it has been true for most of U.S. history. because like Russia, the US is a continental economy, which can grow its own food, has access to most natural resources, not to the same extent that Russia does, but they can do that. China is not in that position. But anyway, an economic divorce between China and the United States, a downscaling of the relationship, the trade relationship, may be an adversarial political, strategic relationship. but hopefully one that falls short of war with each country, the United States and China,

making trade relations and trade deals and strategic partnerships with various countries that are friendly to themselves. I mean, it's perhaps not, you know, a world of harmony and, you know, love, but it's a practical world and a workable one. And it's a lot better than what we seem to be looking at a few weeks. ago when it looked as if the entire relationship between China and the United States was about to break down entirely had they were in an economic war with each other. All right. The US and UK.

Okay. Who got the better of who? From the sublime to the ridiculous. It's the first deal. It's the first deal. Right. In a word the US did decisively. I mean, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, They won this round comprehensively. Stama, our Prime Minister in Britain, the government in Britain, is in a very, very difficult position politically. It's in a very difficult position economically.

You remember we did a programme a short time ago about the effect of the local elections in Britain. There's been an awful lot more. analysis now of the figures. They're even worse than I thought they were when we did that program. Apparently only something like 15% of voters, people who voted, voted Labor, those local elections. I mean, it's an absolute obliteration. The economic situation is very bad. Stama has been constantly telling everybody that he's going to achieve some kind of free trade deal, some kind of economic deal, trade deal with the United States.

This has been a long-standing topic in British politics ever since Brexit. Boris Johnson was also looking to agree a trade deal with the United States. We got to the point, especially after the tariff announcements by Trump back in March, when Britain was becoming desperate for a trade deal. So they did negotiate with the Americans. The Americans wanted a trade deal. Up to now, the Americans have not been very interested in a trade deal. But now they were interested in a trade deal,

exactly for the reasons that you said, because they weren't getting trade deals with anybody else. So the Americans agreed to a trade deal. The British were desperate for a trade deal. We got a trade deal. It is infratically not a free deal. trade agreement, which had been floated and talked about as recently as a few weeks ago. The 10% tariffs remain in place.

The Americans have scaled down some of their harsher tariffs on steel and motor vehicles. It means that a land rover can sell its range rovers in the United States at perhaps more affordable prices than it might otherwise have done. the 10% tariffs remain in place, that still means that Britain is in a weaker trade relationship with the United States than it was before March of this year, because British goods will still be charged at the rate of 10% tariffs. And in the meantime, the British have had to make concessions to the Americans buying certain American agricultural goods, beef and the that kind of thing, which up to very recently they'd resisted doing.

Did the UK, a final question, quick question. Did the UK help out the Trump administration by agreeing to a quick resolution in a way? Because the one thing that Trump did need was a deal. I mean, there was a lot of pressure. Where are the deals? Oh, absolutely. They did. Was this a kind of favor?

I guess you could say it in a way. It wasn't a favor because. the British government itself desperately needed a deal. I mean, they were more desperate for a deal than the Americans. They had to agree a deal on American terms because, I mean, you know, the United is very useful for Trump and, you know, very helpful for him to be able to say that he's got this deal. I mean, he had his entire cabinet round the table, you know, when he got the paperwork and all of that. But ultimately, this is very much a deal on American terms because the, you know,

US approached it from a vastly stronger position. Starbat absolutely had to have a deal. The Americans have been playing a very long game with the British over many years. It's been very tough for the British. The situation economically, as I've discussed many times, is not good. So Britain needed a deal with the US. And here was Trump. He needed a deal. He's prepared to sign one. up quickly. The British basically agreed to do everything that he put to them. It's slanted strongly in the US favour, but the British could say they've got a deal and that's a step forward. And it leaves Britain in a better position than it would have been in if there had been no deal at all. And they were still facing 25% tariffs on motor vehicles and steel exports.

and that kind of thing. Bear in mind, the British steel industry is on the brink of complete collapse. And if 25% tariffs had remained in place on the British car industry, well, it's highly likely that Land Rover would have collapsed as well.

Yeah, agreed. All right. We will end the video there. At the durand.com, we are on Rumble Odyssey, but shoot, telegram, Rockfinner. Next, go to the Duranshot, pick up some merch like what we are wearing

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