What’s happening?

The Trump administration and China’s government have imposed taxes on a big chunk of each side’s products in an escalation of a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. On Monday, the Trump administration made good on its threat to apply 10 percent tariffs to 5,745 Chinese imports — from fire alarms to Christmas-tree lights — that are worth about $200 billion a year. Within hours, China retaliated by collecting taxes of 5 percent to 10 percent on 5,207 American goods, from honey to industrial chemicals, worth about $60 billion a year. China and the United States had earlier imposed 25 percent tariffs on $50 billion of each other’s goods. Combined, the tariffs now cover nearly half the goods and services China sells America and nearly 60 percent of what the United States sells China. Beijing has especially targeted U.S. soybeans in a shot at President Donald Trump’s supporters in the U.S. farm belt.

What’s next?

Trump has threatened to retaliate against China’s latest retaliation by targeting an additional $267 billion in Chinese imports. This move would extend the Trump tariffs to just about everything China sells the U.S. Beijing is running out of U.S. imports to tax. But it can still find ways to inflict economic pain on American companies. China reportedly is forcing U.S. companies to undergo slower customs approvals and tougher inspections by environmental and other regulators. A former finance minister has called for China to clamp down on exports of goods that American companies rely on.

The backdrop

Behind the trade dispute are U.S. allegations that China uses predatory tactics in a relentless drive to overtake American technological dominance. These tactics, the U.S. charges, include cybertheft of U.S. companies’ trade secrets and a requirement that foreign companies hand over proprietary technology as the price of access to the Chinese market. Trump has also complained repeatedly about America’s gaping trade deficit with China, which amounted to $336 billion last year. In May, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Vice Premier Liu He appeared to have reached a cease-fire built around China’s promises to narrow the U.S. trade gap by buying many more American soybeans and liquefied natural gas. But Trump backed away after being criticized for being soft on China. The two countries haven’t held high-level talks since June.
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There may be indications North Korea is finally getting serious about giving up its nuclear arsenal in order to improve the lives of its citizens.

U.S. intelligence officials have long doubted the sincerity of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his representatives when it comes to abandoning their nuclear capabilities, but CIA Director Gina Haspel said Monday there may be reason for hope.

“There does seem to be a suggestion that Kim Jong Un, Chairman Kim, understands and wants to take steps to improve the economic plight of the North Korean people,” Haspel told an audience at the University of Louisville, her first public appearance since being confirmed as the spy agency’s director in May.

Haspel reaffirmed the long-standing U.S. intelligence view that North Korean officials see the country’s nuclear weapons program as “essential to their regime’s survival,” noting that getting Pyongyang to change course will still be a tough sell.

“The regime has spent decades building their nuclear weapons program,” she said. “The North Koreans view their capability as leverage and I don’t think that they want to give it up easily.”

“We’re certainly in a better place than we were in 2017 because of the dialogue we’ve established between our two leaders, the president and Kim Jong Un,” Haspel added.

While U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed some optimism about progress with North Korea and about his relationship with Kim, U.S. intelligence officials have been largely skeptical.

Earlier this month, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told a conference in Washington that the U.S. intelligence assessment of North Korea’s nuclear intentions had not changed despite some symbolic steps by Pyongyang in early June to destroy the entrances to some nuclear testing tunnels and to start dismantling some other equipment.

“Kim Jong Un sees nuclear weapons as key to the regime’s survival and as leverage to achieve his long-term strategic ambitions,” he said. “Absent mechanisms for the on the ground verification by inspectors, we cannot confirm that North Korea has taken any other denuclearization steps at this time.

“This North Korean commitment — and I put commitment in parentheses — to denuclearize presents a huge and critical challenge,” Coats added.
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President Donald Trump on Monday declared himself an “absolute no” on statehood for Puerto Rico as long as critics such as San Juan’s mayor remain in office, the latest broadside in his feud with members of the U.S. territory’s leadership.

Trump lobbed fresh broadsides at San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, a critic of his administration’s response to hurricanes on the island last year, during a radio interview with Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera that aired Monday.

“With the mayor of San Juan as bad as she is and as incompetent as she is, Puerto Rico shouldn’t be talking about statehood until they get some people that really know what they’re doing,” Trump said in an interview with Rivera’s show on Cleveland’s WTAM radio.

Trump said that when “you have good leadership,” statehood for Puerto Rico could be “something they talk about. With people like that involved in Puerto Rico, I would be an absolute no.”

Gov. Ricardo Rossello, an advocate of statehood for the island, said Trump’s remarks had trivialized the statehood process because of political differences.

“The president said he is not in favor of statehood for the people of Puerto Rico based on a personal feud with a local mayor. This is an insensitive, disrespectful comment to over 3 million Americans who live in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico,” Rossello said.

He also questioned how the president of the United States could be at the U.N. General Assembly promoting democracy around the world while “in his own home there is the oldest and most populated colonial system in the world.”

Cruz responded on Twitter: “Trump is again accusing me of telling the truth. Now he says there will be no statehood because of me.”

Jenniffer Gonzalez, Puerto Rico’s non-voting representative in Congress, tweeted: “Equality 4 Puerto Ricans shouldn’t be held up by one bad mayor who’s leaving office in 2020 & do not represent the people who voted twice for statehood.”

Trump’s position on statehood for the island puts him at odds with the Republican Party’s 2016 platform during its national convention, in which it declared support for Puerto Rican statehood.

The president’s remarks followed his claims earlier this month that the official death toll from last year’s devastating storm in Puerto Rico was inflated. Public health experts have estimated that nearly 3,000 people died in 2017 because of the effects of Hurricane Maria.

But Trump falsely accused Democrats of inflating the Puerto Rican death toll to make him “look as bad as possible.”

Trump’s pronouncements have roiled politics in Florida, which has crucial races for governor and U.S. Senate. The state was already home to more than 1 million Puerto Ricans before Hurricane Maria slammed into the island a year ago. Tens of thousands of residents fled Puerto Rico in the aftermath, with many of them relocating to Florida.

The issue of statehood for Puerto Rico — or some form of semi-autonomous relationship — has divided island residents in recent years. The debate over the island’s “status” is the central feature of its politics and divides its major political parties.

The federal government has said previously it would accept a change in the status of Puerto Rico if the people of the island clearly supported the decision. But for decades, Puerto Ricans have been divided between those who favor statehood and those who want to maintain the commonwealth, perhaps with some changes. A small minority continue to favor independence.

The last referendum, in 2017, strongly supported statehood but opponents questioned the validity of the vote because of low turnout.

Any changes would need to be approved by Congress. Statehood legislation, with support from Republicans and Democrats, was introduced in June but appears unlikely to gain momentum as politicians remain hesitant to take up such a thorny issue.
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Yale Law School students are protesting the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court and demanding an investigation of sexual misconduct allegations against him.

Dozens of students wearing black staged a sit-in at the law school Monday. Yale officials cancelled classes to accommodate the demonstration. Some Yale students traveled to Washington to protest the nomination.

The protest came the morning after The New Yorker published the account of a woman who says Kavanaugh exposed himself to her when they were students at Yale in the 1983-84 academic year. Another woman has accused Kavanaugh of assaulting her in high school.

Kavanaugh denies the allegations.

Fifty Yale faculty members have signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging the Senate to conduct “a fair and deliberate confirmation process.”
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The White House says Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will meet with President Donald Trump on Thursday, following news reports that the senior Justice Department official was expecting to be fired.

The announcement comes days after The New York Times reported that Rosenstein last year suggested secretly recording President Donald Trump and that he raised the idea of using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office for being unfit to govern.

Rosenstein had denied the newspaper report last week.

“At the request of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, he and President Trump had an extended conversation to discuss the recent news stories. Because the President is at the United Nations General Assembly and has a full schedule with leaders from around the world, they will meet on Thursday when the President returns to Washington, D.C.,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday.

Some media reports Monday suggested that Rosenstein had discussed resigning while others said he is refusing to leave unless he is fired.

After last week’s Times story, Rosenstein said, “The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect. I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this: based on my personal dealing with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment,” he said in a statement.

The 25th amendment outlines a process for the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to remove the president from office if he or she is unable to perform their official duties.

Rosenstein later issued a second statement denying the allegations in even stronger terms: “I never pursued or authorized recording the President and any suggestion that I have ever advocated for the removal of the President is absolutely false.”

A source who was in the room when Rosenstein made the remark about recording the president said in a statement shared with VOA that the comment was made sarcastically. The source said it “was never discussed with any intention of recording a conversation with the president.”

The deputy attorney general oversees the Special Counsel probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Whether he is fired or resigns on his own could affect who will oversee the Russia investigation.

A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The allegation about Rosenstein detailed in last week’s New York Times story was included in contemporaneous memos kept by ousted Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. The memos, which detailed McCabe’s interactions with President Trump and other high-level officials, were later turned over to the special counsel.

In a statement released on Monday, McCabe expressed concern that Rosenstein’s departure could jeopardize the Russia probe,.

“If the rumors of Deputy AG Rosenstein’s departure are true, I am deeply concerned that it puts that investigation at risk,” McCabe said.
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