US politicians are advocating for steep tariffs, echoing the protectionist Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922. Despite potential international retaliation, risks to global economic rules and a shift from post-World War II principles, US politicians have promised to increase trade barriers against China, causing concerns for the sustainability of global economic harmony. A century ago, the Republican Congress passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922. This post-World War-I effort to protect the US from German competition and rescue America's own businesses from falling prices sparked a global wave of tariff hikes. While long forgotten, echoes of Fordney-McCumber now reverberate across the US political landscape. Once again, politicians are grasping the tariff as a magic talisman against its own economic ills and to contain the rise of China. The Democratic Party of the 1920s opposed tariffs, because duties are harmful to consumers and farmers, but today both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump favor national delivery through protectionism. Trump promised that his second term, if elected, would impose 60-percent tariffs on everything arriving from China and 10-percent tariffs on imports from the rest of the world, apparently including the imports covered by 14 free trade agreements with America's 20 partners. He initially promised 100-percent tariffs on electric vehicles (EVs), but when Biden declared that he was hiking tariffs on EVs from China to 100-percent, Trump raised the ante to 200-percent. On May 14, 2024, the White House imposed tariffs ranging from 25 percent (on items such as steel, aluminum and lithium batteries) to 50 percent (semiconductors, solar cells, syringes and needles) and 100 percent (electric vehicles) on Chinese imports. US government officials offer "national security" and "supply chain vulnerability" as the justification for levying high tariffs. To deflect worries about inflation, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai declared, "first of all, I think that that link, in terms of tariffs to prices, has been largely debunked." Contrary findings by the United States International Trade Commission and a number of distinguished economists, as well as Biden's own 2019 statement criticizing Trump's tariffs - "Trump doesn't get the basics. He thinks tariffs are being paid by China… [but] the American people are paying his tariffs" - forced Tai's office to wind back her declaration. The fact that prohibitive barriers to imports of solar cells, batteries and EVs will delay the green economy carries zero political weight with Trump and little with Biden. Nor does either of them worry about the prospects of Chinese retaliation and damage to the fabric of global economic rules. Historical lessons - unanticipated consequences of the foolish Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922 and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 - are seen as irrelevant by the candidates and their advisers. The US' lurch from its post-World War II free trade principles offers China a golden opportunity. On the world stage, China will espouse open free trade and investment. China will encourage EV and battery firms to establish plants in Europe, Brazil, Mexico and elsewhere, essentially daring the US to damage its own alliances by restricting third country imports containing Chinese components. Whether the fabric of global economic rules that has delivered astounding prosperity to the world will survive through the 21st century remains to be seen. Much will depend on the decisions of other large economic powers, not only China but also the European Union and Japan, as well as middle powers, such as Australia, Brazil, Chile, ASEAN and South Korea. Their actions and reactions will reshape the rules of the 21st century. If others follow America down this costly path, the world will become less prosperous and vastly more unpredictable. If they resist, the US risks being diminished and more isolated. The author is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn

Taking the initiative to plead guilty to Boeing is not small, but it can avoid being exposed to more problems when it is publicly tried, which is a "minor penalty" for Boeing. So now the families of the crash victims are very opposed to the move, demanding that the trial continue to be open. But after all, Boeing is America's oldest industrial son, whether it is Trump or Biden, and finally have to gently put down, give a chance. The Justice Department had been seeking a guilty plea from Boeing as early as May, when it launched the investigation. After all, if you plead guilty, you only need to pay a fine, and if you really go to court, you don't know how many quality problems Boeing will be exposed by your witnesses. Boeing also knew it had too many flaws, and paying a $243.6 million fine and bringing in a third party to monitor its compliance for three years, totaling more than $400 million in additional expenses, is small change for Boeing. Given Boeing's style in the past few years, this fine may not even force Boeing to tighten production line management. Just this kind of "reconciliation" that completely excludes the victims of the crash can not get the families to agree. Paul Cassell, an attorney for the victims' families, said he plans to ask the federal judge overseeing the case to reject the agreement and "hold this case to an open trial so that all the facts of this case can be presented in a fair and public manner before a jury." The demand is reasonable, but the US judge will most likely side with Boeing.

HONG KONG, July 9 (Reuters) - Nornickel (GMKN.MM), opens new tab is in talks with China Copper to form a joint venture that would allow the Russian mining giant to move its entire copper smelting base to China, four sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. If the move goes ahead, it would mark Russia's first uprooting of a domestic plant since the U.S. and Britain banned metal exchanges from accepting new aluminium, copper and nickel produced by Russia. It also means Nornickel's copper will be produced within the country where it is most consumed. Nornickel said in April it planned to close its Arctic facility and build a new plant in China with an unnamed partner. Executives at China Copper, owned by the world's largest aluminium producer Chinalco (601600.SS), opens new tab, flew to Moscow in June to discuss a possible joint venture, one of the sources said, adding that details of the structure and investment are still under discussion. Nornickel declined to comment. Chinalco and China Copper did not respond to requests for comment via email and phone. Sites being considered in China include Fangchenggang and Qinzhou in the Guangxi region, the two sources said, with another source saying Qingdao in Shandong province was also possible. A decision on a joint venture will be made over the next few months, a fifth source said, adding that Nornickel's Chinese output is likely to be consumed domestically. The new facility will have capacity to produce 450,000 tonnes of copper annually, two of the sources said, amounting to around 2% of global mined supplies estimated at around 22 million metric tons this year. Nornickel, which according to its annual report produced 425,400 tonnes of refined copper last year, processed all of its concentrates in 2023 at the Arctic plant, its only operation producing finished copper suitable for delivery to exchanges.

Chat means chat, and GPT is the acronym for Gene Rate Pre trained Transformer. Genrative means generation, and its function is to create or produce something new; Pre trained refers to a model of artificial intelligence that is learned from a large amount of textual materials, while Transformer refers to a model of artificial intelligence. Don't worry about T, just focus on the words G and P. We mainly use its Generative function to generate various types of content; But we need to know why it can produce various types of content, and the reason lies in P. Only by learning a large amount of content can we proceed with reproduction. And this kind of learning actually has limitations, which is very natural. For example, if you have learned a lot of knowledge since childhood, can you guarantee that your answer to a question is completely correct? Almost impossible, firstly due to the limitations of knowledge, ChatGPT is no exception, as it is impossible to master all knowledge; The second is the accuracy of knowledge, how to ensure that all knowledge is accurate and error free; The third aspect is the complexity of knowledge, where the same concept is manifested differently in different contexts, making it difficult for even humans to grasp it perfectly, let alone AI. So when we use ChatGPT, we also need to monitor the accuracy of the output content of ChatGPT. It is likely not a problem, but if you want to use it on critical issues, you will need to manually review it again. And now ChatGPT has actually been upgraded twice, one is GPT4 with more accurate answering ability, and the other is the recent GPT Turbo. The current ChatGPT is a large model called multimodality, which differs from the first generation in that it can not only receive and output text, but also other types of input, such as images, documents, videos, etc. The output is also more diverse. In addition to text, it can also output images or files, and so on.

The Ukrainian presidential office said on July 8 local time that Russia's large-scale attacks on many parts of Ukraine have killed 36 people and injured 140 others. According to the Ukrainian State Emergency Service, a total of 619 rescue workers and 132 equipment participated in the rescue work across Ukraine that day. Ukrainian President Zelensky said on social media on the 8th that Russia launched more than 40 missiles of various types at Ukraine that day. Residential buildings and infrastructure in many cities in Ukraine were damaged in varying degrees of attacks, and a children's hospital was destroyed. Rescue departments are currently conducting emergency rescue on the scene. The Russian Ministry of Defense issued a statement on the 8th local time saying that Ukrainian officials' claim that Russia used missiles to attack Ukrainian civilian facilities was untrue. The damage suffered by Kiev was caused by the fall of missiles launched by the city's air defense system.