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Industry

Trump’s manufacturing push meets reality as costs rise and investment stalls

At Zion Foodtrucks in the US state of Colorado, American-made steel and aluminium are combined with globally sourced stoves, refrigerators, vents and titanium piping to transform everyday vehicles into mobile restaurants. But instead of benefiting from Donald Trump’s push to revive US manufacturing, the company says it has been squeezed by higher costs and tougher competition. Since taking office, the US president’s import taxes on steel and aluminium have hit 50 per cent tied to his “beautiful”...

July 23, 2026

Industry

What do the PLA’s ‘Steel Rain’ shells say about its war plans for Taiwan?

New airburst munitions that shower targets with metal fragments are designed to attack personnel and lightly protected equipment Released on Sunday by the PLA-affiliated China Military Bugle social media channel under the title “Steel Rain”, the footage shows several PHL-191-launched rockets detonating above what appears to be a desert training range, showering a wide area with high-speed metal fragments. The video appears intended to highlight an airburst fragmentation warhead designed to attack personnel and lightly protected equipment. Analysts say the footage suggests that, in a Taiwan conflict, Beijing could prioritise efforts to disrupt Taiwan’s ability to detect, communicate and respond before larger air and amphibious operations begin. “The use of airburst rockets is notable because it signals that these particular weapons would not be used for targeting assets that Taiwan normally stores in mountains and bunkers,” said Mike Bosack, director of the Parley Policy Initiative.

July 23, 2026

Industry

China braces for up to 3 typhoons in devastating wake of Bavi and Maysak

Latest possible storm is brewing east of the South China Sea and poses ‘complex and severe’ challenge, officials say China’s top flood control and drought relief body held an emergency inter-agency meeting on Wednesday to coordinate disaster prevention ahead of the expected 12th named storm of the season. Meanwhile, rainfall remains widespread and intense nationwide, including regions still recovering from recent storms. Rivers and lakes are still swollen in some areas and the soil fully saturated – sharply increasing the risk of flash floods, mountain torrents and landslides. Against this backdrop, the arrival of a new typhoon posed a “complex and severe” challenge, officials warned. The China Meteorological Administration, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Natural Resources and other key departments took part in Wednesday’s meeting. According to the National Meteorological Centre (NMC), up to three typhoons are likely to form in the northwestern Pacific and South China Sea over the next 10 days.

July 23, 2026

Industry

China, US emphasise stability amid lingering tensions

The foreign ministers of China and the United States adopted a largely cordial tone following a meeting on Wednesday where they discussed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s upcoming trip to the US rather than President Donald Trump’s accusations of election interference by Beijing. Their talks were “pragmatic, positive and constructive”, China’s Wang Yi said in a statement after the conversation in Manila. Marco Rubio of the US said that “great difference” between the two countries must be managed...

July 23, 2026

Industry

China’s new chip stores data with a single electron, breaking AI memory bottleneck

The technology enables AI chat models to run on phones using minimal power, without ‘losing memory’ during conversations How many electrons does it take to store a single bit of information? For today’s most advanced dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips from Samsung and SK Hynix, the answer is roughly 200,000. That is the price of reliability – a vast reservoir of charge needed to ensure a “1” or “0” does not fade into noise. But a team at Fudan University in Shanghai has just collapsed that number to its theoretical floor: one. The device, which they named Guiyi, lifts a faint, fleeting signal from just tens of millivolts to a robust 0.5 volts, a tenfold improvement over any previous single-electron attempt.

July 23, 2026

Industry

PLA conducts live-fire drills in Taiwan Strait after Beijing calls Lai speech ‘reckless’

Beginning of exercise coincides with completion of Beijing’s fisheries resources survey conducted in waters east of Taiwan The drill will run from 6am to 6pm on Thursday and Friday, according to a navigation warning issued by Beijing’s maritime safety administration on Wednesday. In Lai’s speech at the DPP annual convention on Sunday, he called on party members to oppose the “red terror” coming from Beijing. On Wednesday, Zhang Han, spokeswoman for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said Lai’s remarks “exposed his unchanging ‘Taiwan independence’ stance” and that his latest speech “recklessly challenged the one-China principle”. Based on the coordinates provided by the maritime safety administration, the drill on Thursday covers an area bounded by five points in waters to the east and south of Dongshan Island, which is part of Zhangzhou in Fujian province. The drill extends into waters east of Dongshan Island towards the Taiwan Strait, with all drill zones within 12km (7.4 miles) of the mainland coast. On Friday, the drill will be conducted in a rectangular nearshore maritime zone south of Dongshan Island and closer to the Dongshan coastline. The two areas partially overlap, based on the coordinates.

July 23, 2026

Industry

US-China trade war reaches India’s streets as Modi weighs risks of Washington bet

Indian leader faces ‘perfect storm’ at home as proposed US trade deal sparks backlash and Trump ramps up pressure over Russian oil and China Thousands of farmers from the northern state of Punjab marched towards Delhi on Tuesday to oppose what they described as a “secret” trade deal with Washington. According to Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, Modi is facing a “perfect storm of geopolitical turmoil and domestic political unrest”.

July 23, 2026

Industry

Trump to steer billions from universities to AI and individual scientists to counter China

White House says overhaul will back AI and researchers to restore the US scientific edge as Beijing closes the innovation gap US President Donald Trump’s administration will redirect billions of dollars in federal research funding away from universities to individual scientists and AI-focused projects, arguing the overhaul is needed to help the US compete with China. The plan, outlined in a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy report released on Tuesday, comes as the administration warns that China has reached parity with the US in research and development spending over the past 20 years, “a situation America did not face even during the Cold War”. “Beyond the sheer scale of its spending, Beijing is treating scientific research capacity as a central pillar of global competition, elevating decision-making to the highest level and taking a tightly integrated approach to partnerships across its sectors,” the report, “Science: A New Golden Age”, said.

July 22, 2026

Industry

US Congress explores new tariffs, sanctions to counter China’s shipbuilding dominance

US lawmakers search for ways to tackle Beijing’s rapid rise in commercial shipbuilding and restore America’s diminished commercial fleet “Should Congress implement targeted tariffs or port entry fees on Chinese-built commercial vessels to level the global playing field?” Representative Young Kim, a California Republican, asked during a congressional hearing on Wednesday. “What about sanctions on Chinese state-owned shipbuilders?” “We’re falling further and further behind China,” Representative Ami Bera, a California Democrat, said during the hearing. “By ourselves, we won’t catch up to the Chinese.” Lawmakers and experts argued that shipbuilding is not only an economic issue but also a national security concern because of its close ties to naval power. Washington has accused Beijing of using state support to expand its shipbuilding industry, allegations China denies.

July 22, 2026

Industry

What is Beijing thinking? Why Washington is struggling to understand its rival

Language is important in US-China diplomacy, but funding cuts and dwindling student exchanges have left a ‘major gap’ in capabilities While the White House framed this vision as a “constructive relationship of strategic stability on the basis of fairness and reciprocity”, Beijing said only that it was a “constructive bilateral relationship of strategic stability”. China watchers zoomed in on the phrase – especially the Chinese version – debating what it could reveal or conceal about Beijing’s long-term ambitions. They put that down to funding cuts to language programmes in America as well as dwindling student exchanges and less interest in learning Chinese. The result is a disjointed network of government programmes, think tanks and independent researchers seeking to translate and interpret China’s latest moves. Analysts say that fragmentation could make it harder for Washington to understand its most critical bilateral relationship.

July 22, 2026

Industry

Chile hunts for copper buyers beyond China with US$100 billion mining plan

Chile’s foreign minister says the copper market is too concentrated, but refining more at home means competing with Chinese smelters Chile wants to widen the group of countries buying its copper and attract about US$100 billion in mining investment over the next decade, its foreign minister said on Wednesday, in the most explicit move yet by the new government in Santiago to reduce its exposure to Chinese demand. “The market is highly concentrated and we need to broaden the number of places that buy our copper,” Francisco Perez Mackenna said at a Bloomberg summit in Singapore, part of a tour through the Asia-Pacific. He said China would remain a very important client because of its industrial capacity, and that global demand should continue to grow further as investment in data centres accelerates. The concentration he described has deepened rather than eased over the past decade, with China now consuming roughly 58 per cent of the world’s copper and taking more than half of Chilean shipments. The South American country produced 5.3 million tonnes in 2025, about a quarter of global output, making it the largest producer and the supplier no major buyer can replace at short notice.

July 22, 2026

Industry

US not getting enough critical minerals from China, Greer says as Xi-Trump meeting looms

Remarks on minerals vital for electronics come as Marco Rubio and Wang Yi discuss upcoming meeting of leaders Washington is still not receiving sufficient critical mineral exports from China, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Wednesday, even as top American and Chinese officials met to finalise key economic deliverables for President Xi Jinping’s expected visit to the White House. “We are getting a flow of critical minerals from China. It’s not as much as we would want. It’s not at the pace we would want, but we are getting them,” Greer said during his testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. Greer also highlighted that the administration is holding “regular meetings and calls with Chinese officials at all levels” to follow through on its “commitment” to expedite export applications, and maintained that the US has “substantial leverage” to push for compliance. “We have a variety of trade tools that we have used, and some are suspended, some are in effect, that we can use to make sure that they comply,” Greer added. “But most importantly, we are accelerating domestic production to try to get away from that dependency.”

July 22, 2026