Business
Canada may escape the worst as Trump declares America’s economic independence with Liberation Day tariffs
MxM News
Quick Hit:
On Wednesday, President Trump declared a national emergency to implement a sweeping 10% baseline tariff on all imported goods, calling it a “Declaration of Economic Independence.” Trump said the tariffs would revitalize the domestic economy, declaring that, “April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn.”
Key Details:
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The baseline 10% tariff will take effect Saturday, while targeted “reciprocal” tariffs—20% on the EU, 24% on Japan, and 17% on Israel—begin April 9th. Trump also imposed 25% tariffs on most Canadian and Mexican goods, as well as on all foreign-made cars and auto parts, effective early Thursday.
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Trump justified the policy by citing foreign trade restrictions and long-standing deficits. He pointed to policies in Australia, the EU, Japan, and South Korea as examples of protectionist barriers that unfairly harm American workers and industries.
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The White House estimates the 10% tariff could generate $200 billion in revenue over the next decade. Officials say the added funds would help reduce the federal deficit while giving the U.S. stronger leverage in negotiations with countries running large trade surpluses.
Diving Deeper:
President Trump on Wednesday unveiled a broad new tariff policy affecting every imported product into the United States, marking what he described as the beginning of a new economic era. Declaring a national emergency from the White House Rose Garden, the president announced a new 10% baseline tariff on all imports, alongside steeper country-specific tariffs targeting longstanding trade imbalances.
“This is our Declaration of Economic Independence,” Trump said. “Factories will come roaring back into our country — and you see it happening already.”
The tariffs, which take effect Saturday, represent a substantial increase from the pre-Trump average U.S. tariff rate and are part of what the administration is calling “Liberation Day” for American industry. Reciprocal tariffs kick in April 9th, with the administration detailing specific rates—20% for the European Union, 24% for Japan, and 17% for Israel—based on calculations tied to bilateral trade deficits.
“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation,” Trump said. “The United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been.” He criticized the establishment of the income tax in 1913 and blamed the 1929 economic collapse on a departure from tariff-based policies.
To underscore the move’s long-anticipated nature, Trump noted he had been warning about unfair trade for decades. “If you look at my old speeches, where I was young and very handsome… I’d be talking about how we were being ripped off by these countries,” he quipped.
The president also used the moment to renew his push for broader economic reforms, urging Congress to eliminate federal taxes on tips, overtime pay, and Social Security benefits. He also proposed allowing Americans to write off interest on domestic auto loans.
Critics of the plan warned it could raise prices for consumers, noting inflation has already risen 22% under the Biden administration. However, Trump pointed to low inflation during his first term—when he imposed more targeted tariffs—as proof his strategy can work without sparking runaway costs.
White House officials reportedly described the new baseline rate as a guardrail against countries attempting to game the system. One official explained the methodology behind the reciprocal tariffs: “The trade deficit that we have with any given country is the sum of all trade practices, the sum of all cheating,” adding that the tariffs are “half of what they could be” because “the president is lenient and he wants to be kind to the world.”
In addition to Wednesday’s sweeping changes, Trump’s administration recently imposed a 25% tariff on Chinese goods tied to fentanyl smuggling and another 25% on steel and aluminum imports—revoking previous carve-outs for countries like Brazil and South Korea. Future tariffs on semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and raw materials such as copper and lumber are reportedly under consideration.
Trump closed his remarks with a message to foreign leaders: “To all of the foreign presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens, ambassadors… I say, ‘Terminate your own tariffs, drop your barriers.’” He declared April 2nd “the day America’s destiny was reclaimed” and promised, “This will indeed be the golden age of America.”
Business
Warning Canada: China’s Economic Miracle Was Built on Mass Displacement
If you think the CCP will treat foreigners better than its own people, when it extends its power over you, please think again: Dimon Liu’s warning to Canadian Parliament.
Editor’s Note: The Bureau is publishing the following testimony to Canada’s House of Commons committee on International Human Rights from Dimon Liu, a China-born, Washington, D.C.-based democracy advocate who testified in Parliament on December 8, 2025, about the human cost of China’s economic rise. Submitted to The Bureau as an op-ed, Liu’s testimony argues that the Canadian government should tighten scrutiny of high-risk trade and investment, and ensure Canada’s foreign policy does not inadvertently reward coercion. Liu also warns that the Chinese Communist Party could gain leverage over Canadians and treat them as it has done to its own subjugated population—an implied message to Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has pledged to engage China as a strategic partner without making that position clear to Canadians during his election campaign.
OTTAWA — It is an honor to speak before you at the Canadian Parliament.
My testimony will attempt to explain why China’s economic success is built on the backs of the largest number of displaced persons in human history.
It is estimated that these displaced individuals range between 300 to 400 million — it is equivalent to the total population of the United States being uprooted and forced to relocate. These displaced persons are invisible to the world, their sufferings unnoticed, their plights ignored.
In 1978, when economic reform began, China’s GDP was $150 billion USD.
In 2000, when China joined the WTO, it was approximately $1.2 trillion USD.
China’s current GDP is approximately $18 trillion USD.
In 2000 China’s manufacturing output was smaller than Italy’s.
Today it’s larger than America, Europe, Japan, and South Korea combined.
If you have ever wondered how China managed to grow so fast in such a short time, Charles Li, former CEO of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has the answers for you.
He listed 4 reasons: 1) cheapest land, 2) cheapest labor, 3) cheapest capital, and 4) disregard of environmental costs.
“The cheapest land” because the CCP government took the land from the farmers at little to no compensation.
“The cheapest labor,” because these farmers, without land to farm, were forced to find work in urban areas at very low wages.
The communist household registration system (hukou 戶口) ties them perpetually to the rural areas. This means they are not legal residents, and cannot receive social benefits that legal urban residents are entitled. They could be evicted at any time.
One well known incident of eviction occurred in November 2017. Cai Qi, now the second most powerful man in China after Xi Jinping, was a municipal official in Beijing. He evicted tens of thousands into Beijing’s harsh winter, with only days, or just moments of notice. Cai Qi made famous a term, “low-end population” (低端人口), and exposed CCP’s contempt of rural migrants it treats as second class citizens.
These displaced migrant workers have one tradition they hold dear — it is to reunite with their families during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, making this seasonal migration of 100 to 150 million people a spectacular event. In China’s economic winter of 2025 with waves of bankruptcies and factory closures, the tide of unemployed migrant workers returning home to where there is also no work, and no land to farm, has become a worrisome event.
Historically in the last 2,000 years, social instability has caused the collapse of many ruling regimes in China.
“The cheapest capital” is acquired through predatory banking practices, and through the stock markets, first to rake in the savings of the Chinese people; and later international investments by listing opaque, and state owned enterprises in leading stock markets around the world.
“A disregard of environmental costs” is a hallmark of China’s industrialization. The land is poisoned, so is the water; and China produces one-third of all global greenhouse gases.
Chinese Communist officials often laud their system as superior. The essayist Qin Hui has written that the Chinese communist government enjoys a human rights abuse advantage. This is true. By abusing its own people so brutally, the CCP regime has created an image of success, which will prove to be a mirage.
If you think the CCP will treat foreigners better than its own people, when it extends its power over you, please think again.
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Business
Judge Declares Mistrial in Landmark New York PRC Foreign-Agent Case
U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan declared a mistrial Monday afternoon in the high-profile foreign-agent and corruption case against former New York state official Linda Sun and her husband Chris Hu, after jurors reported they were hopelessly deadlocked on all 19 counts.
After restarting deliberations Monday morning with an alternate juror, the panel sent a note to Judge Cogan stating:
“Your honor, after extensive deliberations and redeliberations the jury remains unable to reach a unanimous verdict. The jurors’ positions are firmly held.”
Cogan brought the jury into court and asked the foreman whether they had reached agreement on any counts. They replied that they were deadlocked on every one. The judge then declared a mistrial.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Solomon immediately told the court that the government intends to retry the case “as soon as possible.” A status conference is scheduled for January 26, 2026, to determine next steps.
Jury selection began November 10, 2025, and the government called 41 witnesses to the stand, compared with eight for the defense and one rebuttal witness for the prosecution. Deliberations began on December 12, and by this afternoon the jurors had sent three notes to the court — each indicating deadlock.
As The Bureau reported in its exclusive analysis Friday, the panel’s fracture had become visible as jurors headed into a second week of deliberations in a landmark foreign-agent and corruption trial that reached into two governors’ offices — a case asking a jury of New Yorkers to decide whether Sun secretly served Beijing’s interests while she and Hu built a small business and luxury-property empire during the pandemic, cashing in on emergency procurement as other Americans were locked down.
Prosecutors urged jurors to accept their account of a dense web of family and Chinese-community financial transactions through which Sun and Hu allegedly secured many millions of dollars in business deals tied to “United Front” proxies aligned with Beijing. The defense, by contrast, argued that Sun and Hu were simply successful through legitimate, culturally familiar transactions, not any covert scheme directed by a foreign state.
Sun and Hu face 19 charges in total, including allegations that Sun acted as an unregistered foreign agent for the People’s Republic of China; visa-fraud and alien-smuggling counts tied to a 2019 Henan provincial delegation; a multimillion-dollar pandemic PPE kickback scheme; bank-fraud and identity-misuse allegations; and multiple money-laundering and tax-evasion counts.
Prosecutors have argued that the clearest money trail ran through New York’s COVID procurement scramble and a pair of Jiangsu-linked emails. In closing, Solomon told jurors that Sun’s “reward” for steering contracts was “millions of dollars in kickbacks or bribes,” contending the money was routed through accounts opened in Sun’s mother’s name and via friends and relatives.
The government has tied those claims to a broader narrative — laid out in Solomon’s summation and dissected in The Bureau’s reporting — that Sun functioned as a “trusted insider” who repurposed state access and letterhead to advance Beijing’s priorities, including by allegedly forging Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature on invitation letters used for Chinese provincial delegations, while keeping those relationships hidden from colleagues. The defense, in turn, urged jurors to reject the government’s picture of clandestine agency and argued prosecutors had overreached by treating ordinary diaspora networking, trade promotion, and pandemic procurement as criminal conduct — insisting none of the evidence proved the “direction or control” element central to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Whether a future jury will see the same evidence as corruption and covert foreign agency or as culturally familiar commerce and politics — will now be tested again, on a new timetable, in a courtroom that has already shown just how difficult this record is to unanimously interpret.
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