The President's Daily Brief
PDB Afternoon Bulletin | May 30th, 2025: China-US Tariff Truce On The Verge Of Collapse & A Fragile Peace in South Asia
30 May 2025
In this episode of The President's Daily Brief: We’ll start things off with the U.S.-China trade truce—hanging by a thread after a series of aggressive moves from the Trump administration. Later in the show—an update on the conflict between India and Pakistan. Both nations have stepped back from the brink of war—but diplomacy remains on ice. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief TriTails Premium Beef: Visit https://TryBeef.com/PDBfor 2 free Flat Iron steaks with your first box over $250 Birch Gold: Text PDB to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
It's Friday, the 30th of May. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. We'll start things off with the US-China trade truce hanging by a thread, basically, after a series of aggressive moves from the Trump administration. Later in the show, an update on the conflict between India and Pakistan.
Both nations have stepped back from the brink of war, but diplomacy, well, that remains on ice. But first, today's afternoon spotlight. The fragile ceasefire between the US and China over trade now appears to be on the edge of collapse.
Just weeks after both sides agreed to pause hostilities and roll back tariffs, the Trump administration has fired off two major new actions that are being seen in Beijing as a sharp escalation, one aimed at China's tech sector and the other hitting Chinese families and their students directly. Let's start with the tech front.
This week, US officials informed semiconductor firms of new export restrictions that will block the sale of advanced chips design software to China. Now, that software is essential for developing the next generation of microchips used in everything, of course, from smartphones and computers to weapon systems and artificial intelligence.
And it's the latest move in Washington's years-long campaign to limit China's technological rise. Beijing has spent tens of billions of dollars trying to build a homegrown chip industry. But these tools, well, made largely in the U.S. and allied countries, are critical for their effort.
And now, under the new rules, Chinese firms and any entities linked to China's military will be cut off from accessing them. The Chinese government, well, as you might imagine, responded with, let's go with the word fury. A spokesperson accused the U.S. of abusing the concept of national security and deliberately trying to suppress China's development.
But if that move shook China's high-tech ambitions, the second one, well, that struck closer to home. As we reported earlier this week on the PDB, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the U.S.
will now aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, especially those connected even loosely to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in sensitive fields like engineering, computer science, and artificial intelligence. That decision could affect hundreds of thousands of students, many of whom have already spent years and massive amounts of money preparing to study in the U.S.
Critics warn that for many of these students, disproving ties to the Communist Party is next to impossible in a one-party state where political affiliation often comes by default or necessity. China's foreign ministry blasted the move, calling it ideologically driven and unjust. Now, I don't want to be the one to point out the irony of a Communist Party official complaining about an ideology.
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