Gordon Chang exposes China’s May 12th tariff deal breach, ignoring rare earths export pledges to test Trump’s resolve amid factory burnings and bank protests. With Trump poised to retaliate—despite a Florida court ruling—Chang predicts escalating trade wars while warning Xi Jinping’s purges signal weakened control. He dismisses full-scale Taiwan invasion but warns of skirmishes over islands or regional provocations, arguing Trump can weaponize the U.S.’s 38% global consumer market. The episode also hints at explosive FBI documents tied to the "Russian collusion hoax," framing it as a geopolitical chess match where missteps could ignite broader conflict. [Automatically generated summary]
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Across every state, every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
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Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
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The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
And we're back in the Stone Zone.
Joining me now is old China hand Gordon G. Chang.
Gordon Chang has lived and worked in Shanghai and Hong Kong for almost two decades.
He is a columnist, has written for Newsweek, The Hill, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Review, Barons, and elsewhere.
His most recent book, Plan Red: China's Project to Destroy America, now available on Amazon.
It's a must-reading.
I highly recommend you.
Gordon, welcome back into the Stone Zone.
It was right here on this show, only days ago, that you predicted that China would reach a tariff agreement with the United States, but you also predicted that they would violate that agreement.
And now, just as you predicted, that is exactly what has happened.
President Donald Trump on True Social said two weeks ago, China was in grave economic danger.
The very high tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to trade into the United States marketplace, which is by far number one in the world.
We went, in effect, cold turkey with China, and it was devastating for them.
Many factories closed, and there was, to put it mildly, civil unrest.
I saw what was happening.
I didn't like it for them, nor for us.
I made a fast deal with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I did not want to see that happen.
Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized, and China got back to business as usual.
Everybody was happy.
That was the good news.
The bad news, however, is that China, perhaps surprising, not surprising to some, that would include Gordon Chang, has totally violated its agreement with us.
So much for being Mr. Nice Guy.
Well, Gordon Chang, I have to hand it to you.
You called all this just days ago.
Well, that was really easy, Roger.
So it didn't take very much in the way of powers of prediction.
What we saw, especially after the May 12th agreement was announced, was that China did not adhere to its main promise, which was to remove non-tariff barriers that it had put in place after April 2nd, Liberation Day.
This was a very easy thing for Beijing to do.
Specifically, this was the export ban on rare earths to the United States.
It's important to us.
I don't know why China didn't do it, but clearly we're now at a point which was easy to see, and that is Beijing is in violation of the agreement, and the United States needs to do something about it.
I think you're right.
You would think that the Chinese would actually have some sense of relief that we are not launching a nuclear attack on Iran since they depend on their Iranian puppet states for so much of their oil.
What are the ways that China is violating the current agreement?
Yeah, the most important one is the failure to remove the export ban on rare earths.
This was specifically referred to when the May 12th agreement said all of the measures that China had put in place after April 2nd, and that certainly included the rare earth ban, which was actually discussed in Geneva between the American and the Chinese negotiators.
So it was something that China knew that we expected them to do right away.
You know, the thing about this May 12th agreement was, as President Trump intimated in that posting, this was a very favorable agreement for China.
So it's in China's interest to make sure that it goes forward and that we adhere to it.
And so it really is, you know, a very short-sighted decision on the part of the Chinese to try to test President Trump by not adhering and complying with the agreement.
Yeah, and those who have tested Donald Trump in the past have found out that he has ice water in his veins when it comes to negotiating, particularly when he's negotiating on behalf of the American public.
What do you think happens next in this Chinese-American tariff minuet?
President Trump is going to impose some cost, and I think he's going to do it pretty soon.
He's made a marker for himself with the posting a few hours ago, which means that it will happen.
I don't know what form it'll take.
Probably an increase in tariffs.
Could be something else.
We'll find out.
I guess he could also use sanctions if he wanted to.
He does.
Of course, some federal court has already attempted to tell him that he doesn't have the authority to do any of this.
This was one of the most incredible things I've seen in a 50-year career in American politics, where a federal judge in Florida says that Donald Trump has the authority set by Congress to negotiate tariffs for reasons beyond just revenue, the drugs pouring into our country, the trade imbalance, those are legitimate reasons.
Trump declared an economic emergency in order to give himself this executive power as required by the Constitution.
And then suddenly, out of nowhere, this incredibly obscure International Court of Trade, which is located in Manhattan, of all places, rules the president doesn't have this authority.
Trump's lawyers appealed within hours, and a federal appeals court stayed the international trade court's decision so the president could get back to negotiating better trade deals for the American people.
We haven't seen a final ruling on that, but we presume, much like the earlier federal court rulings that said that he didn't have the authority to deport violent, illegal immigrant criminals from the United States, it will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, I imagine.
And my guess is that the International Trade Court, which throughout 100 years of precedent allowed every other president to set tariffs unencumbered, will be overturned.
In the meantime, I think I want to focus on the part of the President's statement, Gordon, when he spoke of civil unrest unfolding in China.
The Chinese have an extraordinarily brutal regime.
They rule with an iron fist.
What is the situation on the ground in China today?
Well, there have been protests of workers, and indeed workers have been burning down their factories.
A recent example was a worker who was not paid 800 Remmbi, basically a little bit more than 100 U.S. dollars.
He burned down his factory.
And that could happen in any country, Roger.
But 800 Brother, as he is now known, has become a folk hero throughout China.
And that doesn't happen in countries.
What it says is that China's people are extremely unhappy.
And whenever they get the opportunity, they will take to the streets as they have been.
Also, we have had hints that there are depositor protests in the eastern part of the country, big cities like Shanghai and Beijing.
And that really is an indication that the banks are being squeezed.
Now, I'm sure that these are the smaller financial institutions because the big ones are flush with cash.
But it shows that the problems in the economy are now radiating into the banking system.
And that's a really bad sign for Beijing.
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The president, by his deft moods in the Middle East, is very clearly trying to isolate China.
He would like to get a solution to the Russian-Ukraine war that's proving more difficult than perhaps the president had thought.
Whenever he gets one side lined up, the other side falls apart on him.
I was kind of surprised that he was unaware of the attempted assassination of Vladimir Putin, where his helicopter was attacked by Ukrainian drones.
I bet those drones, by the way, came from the United States.
It would explain Vladimir Putin's reticence to come to the table.
I was hopeful that Putin would show up in Turkey, where our Ambassador Tom Barak, extraordinarily able individual who the president not only appointed as ambassador to Turkey, but also special envoy to Syria, where we are beginning the peacemaking process with the new Syrian leadership.
I was hoping that Putin would show up and that since the president was already in the Middle East, that he might drop in and broker the deal himself.
See, I've read the art of the deal.
Gordon, how stable is the government of Chairman Xi?
We Americans think that they don't have their own internal politics, but indeed they do.
They certainly do.
So, for instance, there is credible information to suggest that Xi Jinping has lost substantial influence or maybe even total control over the Chinese military.
Recently, his loyalists have disappeared from public view.
There are rumors that they were suicided.
I don't know if that's true or not, but we do know we haven't seen them.
And when we also can see other developments in the Chinese military that suggest that Xi Jinping did not, as many people believe, he did not actually get rid of his own people.
It's Xi Jinping's adversaries in the military got rid of them.
And that says that Xi Jinping's control and influence throughout the Chinese political system, military and civilian, has now been weakened.
There are all sorts of rumors that are flying around about the Chinese civilian leaders undermining Xi Jinping.
I don't know if those are true.
We have no way of confirming them and very little in the way of information that would lead us to one conclusion or another.
But these rumors are there, Roger.
And usually when you hear a lot of rumors of this type, it means that people are trying to undermine whoever is the target of the rumors, in this case, Xi Jinping.
So yeah, I think the Chinese political system is really unstable right now.
If you're just tuning in, we're talking to Gordon Chang.
You find him at Gordon G. Chang on X. Gordon G. Chang on X.
He has a very lively commentary there.
He's also the author of a terrific book, Plan Red, China's Project to Destroy America.
That's available on Amazon.
I've read his previous books, China's Going to War, The Great U.S.-China Tech War, Losing South Korea, Nuclear Showdown, and his analysis of the events in North Korea as well as China are always incisive and on the money.
I don't believe that Chairman Xi trusts his military.
I also don't believe that he's confident about the capabilities of his military.
The last time you joined us, I asked you about the probability of a move on Taiwan, something I thought was highly probable under the weak foreign policy of President Joe Biden.
I think Chairman Xi knew that if they grabbed nationalist China, Taiwan, the result would be a strong letter of protest from Anthony Blinken, the Secretary of State, because Joe was probably sleeping.
Do you still think it is unlikely that the Chinese attest President Donald Trump vis-a-vis Taiwan?
Yeah, what I think is unlikely is that Xi Jinping would initiate hostilities with an attempt to take the main island of Taiwan.
Because as you point out, I don't think Xi Jinping trusts his military.
You know, it's entirely possible.
Two other things, though, are entirely possible and maybe even probable.
Taiwan has a lot of little islands that are just off the Chinese mainland, some of them as close as three miles.
Xi Jinping, needing a quick victory, could take one of those little ones because that would be a fairly simple military exercise.
The other thing that could happen is Xi has been engaged in very provocative activity on his periphery against South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Australia.
One of those confrontations could go wrong.
That could spiral down into a major conflict, and Taiwan could get involved that way.
Gordon Chang's Analysis00:03:06
This is, of course, fascinating.
Donald Trump prefers commerce over chaos, but you can see him moving aggressively to try to isolate the Chinese.
How successful do you think he can be at that?
He can be extremely successful because, as Trump mentioned in his posting, everybody needs the U.S. market.
U.S. consumers account for something like 38-39% of global consumer spending.
That's an enormous percentage.
And all of these countries need the United States.
So President Trump can use that leverage.
He's got to negotiate with some skill.
It's been a little bit chaotic up to now, but I'm sure that President Trump will be able to use the power of our market to accomplish what's good for Americans.
Again, if you're just tuning in, we're talking to Gordon Chang.
Gordon, I want to thank you for joining us in Stone Zone today.
You can follow Gordon at Gordon G. Chang in X.
He also is the author of a terrific new book, Plan Red China's Project to Destroy America, which you can find in Amazon.
If you want to know what's going to happen in China and in Chinese-American relations, follow Gordon Chang on X. His analysis is excellent, and we're always glad to have him here in the Stone Zone.
Gordon, thank you, and God bless you.
Thank you so much, Roger.
Coming up, Dan Bongino, the deputy FBI director, says he's found an entire room of documents, most of them pertaining or many of them pertaining to the so-called Russian collusion hoax, and they're going to be releasing those documents.
We'll be talking about it here in the Stone Zone when we come back.
So whatever you do, stick with us if you want to hear the latest on the Russian collusion hoax and whether those who perpetrated it on America will ever face justice right here in the Stone Zone.
The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our nation has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.