The Bulletin June 3, 2025
Why it matters: Lin Jian, spokesman for the ministry, listed "controls on chip exports to China, halting the sales of chip design software to China, and announcing revocations of Chinese student visas" as having "severely violated the common understandings reached in Geneva". "China firmly opposed this and made strong protests," Lin said at a press briefing on Tuesday morning. "Let me stress once again that this pressuring and coercion is not the right way to engage with China. We urge the U.S. to respect the facts, stop peddling misinformation, correct relevant wrongdoings, and take concrete moves to uphold the common understandings reached by the two sides."
Read more in-depth coverage:
Ex-Trump Official Lays Out Why China Might Be 'Worried' To Cut Tariff Deal
TL/DR: "Let me stress once again that this pressuring and coercion is not the right way to engage with China.'
What happens now? President Trump had earlier accused China of having violated the agreement, and that he would soon speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping to try to resolve the issues that have arisen.
Deeper reading China Says US Violated Trade Truce With Three Moves
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How Xiaomi Succeeded Where Apple Failed
(Bloomberg) -- Lei Jun, founder and chairman of Xiaomi Corp., the only tech company to have successfully diversified into carmaking, couldn't resist. Trump's Gilded Design Style May Be Gaudy. But Don't Call it 'Rococo.' Foreign Buyers Swoop on Cape Town Homes, Pricing Out Locals Massachusetts to Follow NYC in Making Landlords Pay Broker Fees Are Tourists Ruining Europe? How Locals Are Pushing Back NYC Commutes Resume After Midtown Bus Terminal Crash Chaos Speaking at a triumphant launch event in Beijing late last month for Xiaomi's second electric vehicle, a long-anticipated SUV, Lei pointedly mentioned Apple Inc., which spent a decade and $10 billion trying to make a car before giving up last year. 'Since Apple stopped developing its car, we've given special care to Apple users,' he said, noting that owners of the American giant's iPhones would be able to seamlessly sync their devices to Xiaomi's vehicles. The not-so-subtle dig was followed by a flex: Xiaomi then said it had received more than 289,000 orders for its new sport utility vehicle within an hour of its announcement, more than its first EV, a sedan launched in March 2024. Xiaomi succeeding where Apple failed has burnished Lei's reputation, made his company one of the most valuable in China and shaken up both the tech and automobile industries. The collapse of Apple's moonshot car program has only underscored the effectiveness of Xiaomi's grounded approach, which took inspiration from proven designs from Tesla Inc. and Porsche Automobil Holding SE while staying true to the affordable ethos that's made it a cult brand for Gen Z consumers. Crucially, it also launched into the most fertile EV ecosystem in the world — China. With state subsidies, existing charging infrastructure and a ready made supply chain, Xiaomi had a structural tailwind Apple lacked. Xiaomi declined to comment for this story. Lei and Xiaomi's 'charisma, brand recognition and ecosystem cannot be underestimated,' Yale Zhang, the managing director of Shanghai-based consultancy Automotive Foresight, said. 'It's a big influence on young consumers who have filled their homes with Xiaomi products. When it comes time to buy an EV, they naturally think of Xiaomi.' But building cars is a far more complex, capital intensive challenge than making phones or rice cookers. It requires mastering safety regulations, global logistics and production at scale, all while competing against legacy automakers with long histories and large model lineups. Any international expansion will also require navigating complex geopolitical landscapes. As one of the first tech giants to actually manufacture a car, Xiaomi is in uncharted territory. Apple's Failings Apple's car project, internally dubbed Project Titan, failed in large part because it wasn't just an EV — it was at one point an attempt to leapfrog the auto industry with a fully autonomous, Level 5 self-driving machine. Its goals were lofty and the direction constantly shifting, the result being over a decade of effort with nothing to show. Lei, 55, was comparatively stingy with time and resources and staked his personal reputation on the endeavor, claiming that making cars would be his 'last entrepreneurial project.' Xiaomi's public narrative is that Lei and his team learned by visiting multiple Chinese automakers, including Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. and Great Wall Motor Co., and talked to more than 200 industry experts in some 80 meetings. The reality is also that he used Xiaomi's reputation as an innovative consumer behemoth to get close to China's large carmakers and pick off their top talent. Geely and its billionaire founder Li Shufu welcomed Lei to the automaker's research institute in Ningbo in the months leading up to Xiaomi's announcement that it would enter the car business to discuss topics, including potential collaboration. It's Geely lore that Lei added the WeChat contacts of many staff at the institute, including then-director Hu Zhengnan. Hu later joined Shunwei Capital Partners, the investment firm co-founded by Lei. Recruitment Tactics Xiaomi headhunters also courted Geely staff intensely, according to people familiar with the matter. While it's common for talent to move between companies in the same industry, it was unusual to see this level of aggressiveness around recruitment, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing information that's private. Geely didn't respond to a request for comment. Hu, known for his love of the German luxury marque Porsche, was one of the team members credited as being instrumental to developing Xiaomi's EV business, Lei said at the SU7 launch in 2024. Lei added that Hu left his previous employer after his contract ended. Other executives who joined Xiaomi came from companies including BAIC Motor Corp., BMW AG, SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co. — the General Motors Co. joint venture with SAIC Motor Corp. and Wuling Motors Holdings Ltd. — and auto supplier Magna Steyr LLC. Besides assembling top Chinese automaking talent, Lei made a prescient bet on investing in a self-controlled supply chain — insulating Xiaomi's operation from manufacturing vagaries. This came from painful lessons learned in Xiaomi's early smartphone-producing days, when external suppliers would cut off components unpredictably. In 2016, some members of Xiaomi's supply chain team displeased Samsung Electronics Co. representatives and the South Korean firm threatened to halt supply of its industry-leading AMOLED screens. To mend the fractured relationship, Lei flew to Shenzhen to meet with Samsung's China head at the time. The pair drank five bottles of red wine during their dinner meeting, according to a Xiaomi company biography, and Lei also made multiple trips to Samsung's headquarters in South Korea to apologize and negotiate the resumption of supply. Representatives from Samsung declined to comment. After Xiaomi went into the carmaking business, it invested into almost all parts of the EV supply chain, from batteries and chips to air suspension and sensors. It pumped more than $1.6 billion via Shunwei or other Xiaomi-led funds into over 100 supply chain companies between 2021 and 2024, according to data compiled by Chinese analytics firm Zhangtongshe and Bloomberg. The components from some of the companies that Xiaomi invested in have ended up in its cars, such as lidars from Hesai Technology Co. and onboard chargers and voltage converters from Zhejiang EV-Tech Co. With the 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) it committed to the first phase of its EV venture, Xiaomi also built its own factory, rather than going down the contract manufacturing route that some Chinese makers, including Nio Inc. and Xpeng Inc., did when they started out. 'Among tech companies that now build electric vehicles, those who previously had hardware products seem to be more successful than those who only had software products or information services,' said Paul Gong, UBS Group AG's head of China autos research. Copycat Allegations Despite its early success, there are many who argue Xiaomi's one hit car is copied from elsewhere — and that a sole successful vehicle does not a successful auto producer make. Lei's aggressive approach has also raised hackles in China's car industry. Yu Jingmin, vice president of SAIC's passenger car division, reportedly described Xiaomi's approach as 'shameless' in a critique of the SU7 resembling Porsche. The SU7 has been colloquially dubbed 'Porsche Mi' by netizens. SAIC didn't respond to questions about Yu's remarks. Xiaomi's design team, led by former BMW designer Li Tianyuan, has defended the SU7's aesthetics, emphasizing that the choices were driven by aerodynamic efficiency and performance benchmarks. In late March, there was another setback after a fatal accident involving the SU7. The car had its advanced driver assistance technology turned on before the crash, which afterward led to authorities reining in the promotion and deployment of the technology. The usually vocal Lei kept a low profile on social media for more than a month post the March accident. He returned to more active engagement in May with a missive that said this period of time was the most difficult in his career. Fortunately for Xiaomi, its consumer base is sticky. Known as 'Mi Fans,' the loyal customers have played a pivotal role in the company's rise. Xiaomi cultivated this fandom early on by prioritizing user feedback and the grassroots allegiance has helped it build strong brand equity, especially in China. The SU7 has remained a top selling model even after the accident in March. Indeed, dealers have reported that nearly 50% of customers plump for the SU7 without comparing it to other brands. 'A significant number of older consumers are buying the SU7 for their children, indicating that the model has built trust among more conservative buyers thanks to its safety and quality,' said Rosalie Chen, a senior analyst from investment research firm Third Bridge. Small Scale Xiaomi has set a delivery target of 350,000 units in 2025, up from its previous goal of 300,000, buoyed by demand for the newly launched YU7 and a ramp up in production. The starting prices for the SU7 sedan, at 215,900 yuan ($30,100), and its SUV, at 253,500 yuan, make them competitive alternatives to models like Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y. The EVs are also showing financial promise. Xiaomi posted record revenue for the first quarter this year, driven by car and smartphone sales. Its EV division is expected to turn profitable in the second half of 2025, Lei said in an investor meeting in June. But even if the popularity of Xiaomi's EVs can spring beyond the company's devoted base, production is still on a much more boutique scale. China's top car brand, BYD Co., sold around 4.3 million EVs and hybrids last year, many overseas, while Tesla moved about 1.78 million vehicles globally. Toyota Motor Corp., the world's No. 1 automaker, sold some 10.8 million vehicles and boasts a lineup of approximately 70 different models. Lei doesn't seem to be prioritizing the mass market of below $20,000 yet, which drives significant volume and is where BYD dominates, Automotive Foresight's Zhang said. Without a lineup in that segment, Xiaomi cars will remain niche purchases for middle to higher-income consumers and Xiaomi may face the same risks as Tesla, which is seeing its sales slump exacerbated by a narrow consumer base and limited models. Nonetheless, Lei seems buoyed by Xiaomi's early wins and is now looking at global expansion. Xiaomi will consider selling cars outside China from 2027, he said last week. Success or otherwise, the European Union, the US and Turkey have all slapped tariffs on Chinese EVs, but Xiaomi wants to set up a R&D center in Munich and may test sales starting in European markets such as Germany, Spain and France when the time is right, Chinese media 36Kr reported in April. 'Xiaomi is a latecomer to the auto industry,' Lei admitted on Weibo in June. But, he said, in a market driven by technology and innovation and the rising global influence of China's EV culture, 'there are always opportunities for latecomers.' --With assistance from Vlad Savov, Mark Gurman, Drake Bennett and Jessica Sui. For Brazil's Criminals, Coffee Beans Are the Target Sperm Freezing Is a New Hot Market for Startups SNAP Cuts in Big Tax Bill Will Hit a Lot of Trump Voters Too Pistachios Are Everywhere Right Now, Not Just in Dubai Chocolate China's Homegrown Jewelry Superstar ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
29 minutes ago
Supreme Court's expansive view of presidential power is 'solidly' pro-Trump: ANALYSIS
President Donald Trump may not have a perfect rubber stamp in the U.S. Supreme Court, but he is finding little willingness by the six-justice conservative majority to stand in his way. As the justices begin the traditional summer recess, the sweeping impact of their judgments from the recently concluded term -- in 56 cases argued and more than 100 matters from the emergency docket -- is coming into focus for the administration and the country. Despite the nation's narrow political divide, the court delivered rulings disproportionately advantageous to interests of the Republican political establishment in power. "Time and again, the Supreme Court came down on one side, and solidly so -- on the very conservative side," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional scholar and dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. Most notably, the court imposed dramatic new limits on the ability of federal judges to check presidential power, coming one year after it established sweeping, presumptive immunity for presidents engaged in "official acts." "Federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies," explained Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her historic opinion allowing Trump to move forward with plans to end birthright citizenship, which has been the law of the land for more than a century. In 14 other emergency appeals Trump brought to the high court, the justices granted his request -- at least in part -- on 12 occasions. The conservative majority gave the green light to the Trump administration's mass layoffs of federal workers, the removal of openly transgender service members from the U.S. military, deportation of noncitizens to third countries with little due process, and access for DOGE staffers to Americans' most sensitive information held by the Social Security Administration. The court did narrowly block Trump's request to continue a freeze of $2 billion in foreign aid money owed to nonprofit groups for services rendered and denied a bid to dismiss the legal case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland migrant and alleged gang member whom the administration deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order, and other alleged Venezuelan criminals. The successive decisions have increasingly incensed the court's liberals. "Other litigants must follow the rules, but the administration has the Supreme Court on speed dial," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote bluntly Thursday in a dissent from the court's decision clearing the way for the government to send eight migrants to South Sudan. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in extraordinarily stark and impassioned language in dissent in the birthright citizenship case, accused her conservative colleagues of creating an "existential threat to the rule of law" by frequently overriding lower court judges. "This Court's complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise," she wrote. Many legal scholars don't share Jackson's ominous view, including several critical of Trump. "I'm pretty confident that within a matter of weeks … there's going to be basically nationwide coverage of declarations or injunctions making clear that the birthright citizenship contention of the government is just absolutely absurd, insane, and unlawful," said George Conway III, a prominent conservative lawyer who now leads a coalition of attorneys opposed to actions of the Trump administration. As for a broader fear about the erosion of judicial authority, Conway suggested fixation on the court system as a check on the president might be misplaced. "We can't expect the courts to save us. Even if every district judge in the country and every appellate court in the country, and every justice … on the Supreme Court agrees that this administration is violating the law, left and right," Conway said. "They can't save us. The people have to save themselves here." Still, the Supreme Court's expansive view of presidential power is giving Trump significant leeway -- with potentially more to come headed into the summer. The justices will soon decide whether to roll back a temporary nationwide injunction currently barring the Trump administration from moving forward with large-scale reductions of the federal workforce across 19 agencies and offices. They are also expected to weigh in on whether to let the president move forward with elimination of most employees at the Department of Education in an effort to dismantle the agency while litigation over its future continues in federal court. Many veteran court watchers have decried a lack of explanation from the justices for its decisions in these consequential cases. "This court not only militantly refuses to talk about the effect of their decisions, they kind of gaslight us into pretending that the effects of their decision won't be what they are," said Sherrilyn Ifill, Howard University law professor and former director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Chief Justice John Roberts -- who was the justice most often in the majority last term at 95% of the time -- was the first member of the court to speak out publicly after the flurry of controversial decisions. In rare televised remarks at a federal judicial conference in North Carolina, Roberts confronted what he called "some sharp adjectives" directed at the court amidst a wave of critical public opinion. "The idea that we're responsible for whatever somebody is angry about -- it just doesn't make any sense, and it's very dangerous," Roberts said of the critics. "What they're angry about or upset about is probably not that you applied the principle … It's that they lost whatever they were looking for." A judge's role, Roberts said, is to "interpret the law to the best of our ability," not to write the laws.
USA Today
32 minutes ago
- USA Today
AI is changing our world. At what point will it change our reality?
We aren't hapless figures in a false simulation, despite efforts to make that our new reality. A Pakistani crowd set fire to a Hindu temple. Chinese researchers experimented with a bat in a wet lab. An election worker donning a gay pride pin shredded election ballots. Palestinians are gratefully accepting U.S. aid in Gaza. All these events were caught on video, yet none is real. These videos are a result of a Time magazine analysis of Google's new Veo 3 artificial intelligence video model, a powerful new AI tool making 8-second videos that are uncomfortably realistic. AI videos have existed for years now, but this is on an entirely new plane, one that proves we've climbed out of the uncanny valley and summited a higher, scarier peak. While these videos are still clockable as AI, the technology will only get better, making it even more difficult to determine what's real and what's fake. In an age where misinformation already runs rampant, the line separating fact from fiction has become a blur. Advancements in AI will only erase it further by proliferating false realities until we find ourselves in a post-truth society. Post-truth refers to a situation where facts are no longer important in contemporary political and public debate. The concept is not so much used to suggest that the truth does not exist, but that facts have become secondary to our political point of view, according to ScienceDirect. By the time our social media feeds are littered with AI videos of political candidates saying things they never said and fake news moments pushing agendas to sway public opinion, it will be far too late. By then, the truth, the facts and reality itself will become secondary, a problem we're already seeing in education. Opinion: As a college professor, I see how AI is stripping away the humanity in education A generation of critical nonthinkers A New York article recently dug into AI's place in education and how many students are relying on AI to do all of their schoolwork. Capitalism has turned higher education into a means to an end, the latter being a high-paying job (hopefully). Students have no desire to pursue knowledge; they're fine with letting AI work and think for them. A generation averse to critical thought is primed to fall for AI trickery. It's scary to think that higher education, a place once conducive to the development of critical thought, problem-solving skills and creativity, is being infiltrated by a singular mechanism that undoes its very foundation. And what's to say of these students when they exit the four-year microcosm that is college after cheating their way through? Will pre-med students turn to ChatGPT to diagnose patients? Will future lawyers use AI to summarize cases and form arguments? Opinion: Is it me or ChatGPT? As AI grows smarter, I have a down-to-earth worry ‒ my job. AI not only invades political and educational spaces, but it chips away at our humanity in our most isolated, insular and vulnerable moments. AI therapy gaslights ChatGPT and other dedicated AI therapy chatbots have become a low-cost, accessible option for those seeking mental health assistance as our culture wrestles with loneliness and isolation. But computerized AI is not meant to offer meaningful support for the minutiae of human emotion. Behavior that rests on AI's unfounded ability to grasp our humanity leads to outcomes that range from futile to detrimental. A 14-year-old boy died by suicide after becoming emotionally dependent on an AI chatbot. ChatGPT convinced a man with past mental health diagnoses that he had fallen in love with an AI entity named Juliet. When confronted with the truth, he became violent, resulting in his being killed by police. His father used ChatGPT to write his obituary. Cases like these seem to be more common, paired with less deadly but equally unnerving impacts of AI use, like falling down rabbit holes of spiritual mania and unfounded clairvoyance. Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. These scenarios all share similarities in that victims are gaslit to believe AI is a sentient being that understands them on a deeper level. They fall prey to confirmation bias and the spiritual psychosis that follows. The false reality spewed by AI becomes their all-encompassing truth. The way AI is discussed makes it seem like this is a necessary outcome, that there is nothing anyone can do to stop people from falling down AI's deadly rabbit hole of misinformation. Technological determinism posits that advancements in technology, including advancements in AI, are an inevitable process independent of human or societal interference. But who exactly benefits from leaving such a dangerous tool of misinformation unchecked? What is gained from blurring the line between fact and fiction? We aren't hapless figures in a false simulation, despite efforts to make that our new reality. Kofi Mframa is a columnist and digital producer for USA Today and the USA TODAY Network. You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.
