How China can benefit from Trump tariff rulings
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Did you know that foreign investors are quietly funding lawsuits in American courts through a practice called third-party litigation funding? Shadowy overseas funders are paying to sue American companies in our courts, and they don't pay a dime in U.S. taxes if there is an award or settlement. They profit tax-free from our legal system, while U.S. companies are tied up in court and American families pay the price to the tune of $5,000 a year.

Thank you.

It's a common sense move that discourages frivolous and abusive lawsuits and redirects resources back into American jobs, innovation, and growth. Only President Trump and congressional Republicans can deliver this win for America and hold these foreign investors accountable. Contact your lawmakers today and demand they take a stand to end foreign-funded litigation abuse. Breaking news coming in from Bet365, and it's no surprise.

Same game parlay from Bet365 just keeps getting better. Well, it's even easier to make a bet. Choose from the most popular markets like hits, run line, totals, and home runs. So many to choose from. Download the app, start building your bet, and see why it's never ordinary at Bet365. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. 21 plus only. Must be physically located in Virginia. TNC Supply.

Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times, this daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today with me, Laura Cook and Tom Noonan. The confusion around what is going on with Donald Trump's tariffs looks like it's going to continue. The White House has launched its legal challenge to the ruling by the Court of International Trade in New York, which voided them.

An appeal ruling now means they are back on, at least for the moment, while that case is heard.

Of course, this legal back and forth will be watched closely in Beijing, given China has faced the most punishing tariffs on those reciprocal measures and on fentanyl. Now, confusion and day-by-day changes seems an anathema to the Chinese Communist Party with its five-year plans and long-term strategies. But can China actually benefit from the legal battles in the US? Our guest today is The Times' China correspondent, Richard Spencer.

Richard, how does this legal back and forth around tariffs affect China? It affects China in numerous ways. I mean, it affects China badly because the tariffs are having a big effect in China already. Factories are closing. There is a lot of uncertainty about investment in more factories, particularly those targeting the American market.

On the other hand, you know, it's not all bad for China in that it was already trying to swivel away somewhat from the American market. I mean, America's share of its exports has gone down from 30% to about 13% or 14% in the last couple of decades. China is aware that America, a lot of American politicians, a lot of America wants to decouple, to use the term,

famous phrase from China. So it's now being impelled even further to sort of separate its supply chains away from America. And the other way it affects China is it just makes America look slightly crazy at the moment. And that if China is the main geopolitical rival to world leadership, that's good for China. Yeah.

You know, the sight of these very peremptory tariffs being brought in by Trump without any real consultation, anyone knowing what to expect. Then Trump suspends them when the market goes crazy. Then the courts rule against them. And then again last night says he can carry on with the tariffs policy further on.

you know, until there's another court ruling. This uncertainty makes the Chinese way of doing things with its five-year plans and its long-term strategies and its very clear signalling of how it wants its export policy to work makes it look rather attractive.

When we get to the end of these legal processes in the US, Richard, if, and it's a big if, the courts decide Donald Trump can't do this and doesn't have this power to impose and lift tariffs in the way that he has, if that's taken off the table, what does he do next? How can he keep on pressuring China?

I mean, you know, the cynic and the cheap shot, if I were in American politics, would say, well, you could do what Joe Biden did. Joe Biden also had a terrorist policy on China, but he did it in a somewhat more normal way. He went through the usual processes of consultation and he didn't kind of challenge the Congress and the courts necessarily.

He didn't sort of stand up there on a liberation day and say, right, we're going to screw over the rest of the world. You know, Yabu sucks. So there is that possible. There is that boring old fashioned way of doing politics, which most countries do. And America did until Donald Trump came in. Yeah.

To look on the other side, to look at it from the point of view of the Trumpsplainers, these pro-Trump people who come from a slightly more normal background, that there is an argument that this is the shock therapy and that at the end of all this, once the world is saying, Jesus, now America's taking this issue seriously, we've got to take this seriously, America has to take it seriously, China has to take it seriously,

And then you can get the Congress involved, you can get trade negotiators involved, you could see the rules of global trade being changed, which might be to everyone's long term advantage, you know, particularly remove some of the sort of crazier economic balances that economists and some of the financial markets fear, like the huge American debt pile, for example.

And even if the tariffs are taken off by the judges, do you think the relationship between the US and China, whether that's economically or in any other aspect, can go back to what it was before January the 20th, 2025? You know, I would, I mean, although that's the question everyone's asking, I would actually challenge the terms of that question. You know, the China...

America relationship is incredibly dynamic. It has been essentially, I mean, if you really want to be historical, it has been ever since the communists took over with China, you know, America isolated China, China isolated itself. And then, you know, America brought

China in from the cold in the 1970s with the outreach by President Nixon and Henry Kissinger to Chairman Mao in the early 70s. It was done with huge amounts of disruption on all sides. In between 1996 and 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, China laid off 50 million workers, 50 million workers.

That is an extraordinary thing to do. And I say that to show how dynamic this relationship was. And then within a few years, by the mid 2000s, 30% of China's exports were going to America. And that has been continuing to change because, as I say, as it's become a technological as well as a manufacturing superpower,

Not just Trump, but other American politicians have said, well, hang on, we've got to, you know, this has to be in some way controlled, looked at, monitored. There was a big fallout. There's a much bigger fallout between Biden and Xi Jinping than there has been between Trump and Xi Jinping. I mean, this has now been forgotten because we have such short attention spans. But Xi Jinping refused to allow any officials to speak to Americans for 18 months.

between 22 and 23 because he was so angry with what America was doing. So this did not start on January the 20th or on April the 2nd when Trump announced Liberation Day. He just turned it into a sort of Trump show as he does. But these are medium to long-term patterns that are being played out here.

And the danger of what Trump has done is that actually he's done it in such a chaotic way that it's actually helped China. You've written that the question now is whether the Communist Party can continue to thrive if the economic relationship is permanently changed. Do you think that was the whole point of the tariffs in the first place, to undermine the Communist Party?

Yeah, so that's a very good question because there was undoubtedly an element of that among some of Trump's advisers. You know, some of Trump's advisers are furiously anti-China, particularly his trade counsellor, Peter Navarro, who's written books about, you know, the dangers of China.

And, you know, there is always this undercurrent of regime change think in America. There's always this idea, it wouldn't be nice if China wasn't run by the Communist Party. But I don't think that's the strategy. I don't think the strategy is saying, right, A leads to B leads to C. It's saying, you know, there are various outcomes. We've got to sort of maximise

the American advantage of these outcomes. And that means weakening China. Now, the downside is that when Chinese regimes fall,

they fall in a very bloody and messy way. So some Chinese people I know who are thoughtful about these things say, well, actually, the important thing is to allow a sort of dynamic process of change. You know, I mean, the Communist Party isn't going to sort of announce tomorrow free elections and, you know, Xi Jinping float off into retirement somewhere. But there are those people who say that China has to change dynamically. So the question really in the short term, a more specific answer to your question is,

there will be if these tariffs go through, if the trade chaos around the world continues on the back of what Trump's doing, there will be lots of people unemployed in China. It's having a bit of an economic hard time. It's being forced to invest more debt. It's a very indebted country now. You know, there could be more millions, certainly hundreds of thousands of job losses as a result of all this, possibly millions. So there's a lot of dissatisfaction around. But it

you know, on the street, you don't feel that there's a sort of, you know, an inflection moment coming. Richard, thank you. That's Richard Spencer, The Times' China correspondent. Now, Richard spoke there about Donald Trump's tendency to turn his presidency, including in this case his tariff announcements, into the Trump show. And of course, some of the most eye-catching and frankly explosive shows have been his meetings with foreign leaders in the Oval Office.

Last Friday, we looked at those sit-down meetings in more detail, especially those with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky back in February and South Africa's Simul Ramaphosa. With The Times' US assistant editor David Charter in an episode called Trump's Ritual Humiliations Hit US Diplomacy. Do go back and have a listen to that. That's it from us. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. See you tomorrow.

Did you know that foreign investors are quietly funding lawsuits in American courts through a practice called third-party litigation funding? Shadowy overseas funders are paying to sue American companies in our courts, and they don't pay a dime in U.S. taxes if there is an award or settlement. They profit tax-free from our legal system, while U.S. companies are tied up in court and American families pay the price to the tune of $5,000 a year.

But there is a solution. A new proposal before Congress would close this loophole and ensure these foreign investors pay taxes, just like the actual plaintiffs have to.

It's a common sense move that discourages frivolous and abusive lawsuits and redirects resources back into American jobs, innovation, and growth. Only President Trump and congressional Republicans can deliver this win for America and hold these foreign investors accountable. Contact your lawmakers today and demand they take a stand to end foreign-funded litigation abuse. Breaking news coming in from Bet365, and it's no surprise.

Same game parlay from Bet365 just keeps getting better. Well, it's even easier to make a bet. Choose from the most popular markets like hits, run line, totals, and home runs. So many to choose from. Download the app, start building your bet, and see why it's never ordinary at Bet365. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. 21 plus only. Must be physically located in Virginia. TNCs apply.