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A protracted trade war could trigger a global recession and shift the balance of power in ways that fundamentally undermine U.S. standing in the world.

As the Washington-Beijing trade war grows deeper, who will blink first? Amy Hawkins reports
After a fortnight in which Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs evolved into an escalating trade war with China, a sense of defiant nationalism has been building in the east Asian country. The Chinese foreign ministry has even been sharing historic video clips from the former leader Mao Zedong:
“As to how long this war will last, we are not the ones to decide … We’ll fight until we completely triumph!”

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US attorney general Pam Bondi on Wednesday unveiled legal action against Maine, in an escalation of Donald Trump’s conflict with the state for refusing to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports.
Reuters reports that the lawsuit comes five days after the administration tried to cut off all of Maine’s federal funding for public schools and its school lunch program over the issue, following a 21 February meeting of Trump and a group of US governors where he clashed with Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills.
Nothing in Title IX or its implementing regulations prohibits schools from allowing transgender girls and women to participate on girls’ and women’s sports teams. Your letters to date do not cite a single case that so holds.
It was a compelling meeting. And toward the end, we actually came up with – I’m going to say ‘finally,’ but I don’t mean it in the way that we were waiting, I mean it in the way that it took a while for us to get to this place – what Putin’s request is to get, to have a permanent peace here.

A new initiative aims to boost the local economy by attracting elderly travellers to remote parts of the country.

The US president has upset global norms in the space of weeks, spurring a flurry of defence spending, diplomatic overtures and offers to boost trade
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has stoked fears over Washington’s commitment to the security of its allies in the Asia Pacific at a time when tensions are running high in the region, home to several potential flashpoints.
Countries across the region are urgently considering their options in a new era where the US president has over its invasion of Ukraine, suggested in order to redevelop it, and unleashed .

Chinese factories flood TikTok with videos urging Americans to buy direct after Trump’s tariffs - Experts say videos are likely an effort by counterfeit manufacturers to take advantage of confusion ov ...

A Brazilian rare earths mine backed by American investors illustrates China’s grip over the strategic minerals that underpin the modern economy.

Value of Nvidia dropped by billions on Wednesday after president imposed new restrictions on the chip giant
The US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, warned Donald Trump’s tariffs were generating a “challenging scenario” for the central bank and were likely to worsen inflation.
Powell’s comments on Wednesday came US stock markets had already been rattled by a new trade restriction on the chip designer Nvidia. The sell-off picked up as Powell spoke to The Economic Club of Chicago.

Exclusive: civil servants beef up security rules for sensitive negotiating papers over fears posed by hostile US trade policy
UK officials are tightening security when handling sensitive trade documents to prevent them from falling into US hands amid Donald Trump’s tariff war, the Guardian can reveal.
In an indication of the strains on the “special relationship”, British civil servants have changed document-handling guidance, adding higher classifications to some trade negotiation documents in order to better shield them from American eyes, sources told the Guardian.

The Eurosceptic model of a globalised Britain detached from its local continent has aged very badly in the era of Trump’s trade wars
Even when the transatlantic alliance was more functional than it is now, there was not a united view of China. There has always been common wariness of Beijing as a commercial rival and potential security threat. But for hawks in Washington the idea of an alternative superpower closing in on economic and technological parity feels existential. More dovish Europeans have been readier to leaven caution with engagement.
Britain has veered between the two poles. In 2015, David Cameron promised a “” of open trade with China. In 2020, under pressure from the US, Boris Johnson banned Huawei, a Chinese telecoms company, from UK 5G infrastructure.
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BBC Verify's Jake Horton looks into the truth behind the claims, and what we know about how luxury goods are made.

Beijing’s game plan to best Trump in the tariff wars•
In all the confusion of Donald Trump’s trade policies, two things have become clearer. First, that China is the White House’s main tariff target and, second, that Beijing has a strategy that may result in its economy coming out in better shape than America’s.
As explains for our big story, the Chinese government looks to have game-played how to “fight to the end” against Trump’s economic animus. Beijing’s signal to the rest of the world that it is committed to multilateral trade and remains a stable partner has been met with a guarded welcome in Europe.