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Newscast

Trump’s Tariff Turmoil: China Strikes Back

Newscast

BBC

Politics, Daily News, News

4.36.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today, we look at what could be the start of a trade war between the US and China.

After postponing tariffs on Canada and Mexico, President Trump has introduced a 10% tax on all goods imports from China. Early this morning Beijing announced it would impose a retaliatory 10% levy, albeit on fewer products.

Adam is joined by Laura Bicker, the BBC’s China Correspondent and Cindy Yu from the Spectator’s Chinese Whispers podcast.

Plus, Adam speaks to journalist Ben Westhoff about the fentanyl crisis in America and why President Trump had cited it as the reason behind raising taxes on Mexican, Canadian and Chinese goods.

You can now listen to Newscast on a smart speaker. If you want to listen, just say "Ask BBC Sounds to play Newscast”. It works on most smart speakers. You can join our Newscast online community here: https://tinyurl.com/newscastcommunityhere Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Adam Fleming. It was made by Jack Maclaren with Anna Harris and Shiler Mahmoudi. The technical producer was Stephen Bailey. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The editor is Sam Bonham.

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

0:04.6

Hello, this episode of Newscast is coming to you from a different studio

0:08.1

because the classic newscast studio is broken.

0:11.1

So we had to go begging, and luckily, Nikki Campbell lent us his studio

0:15.0

where he does his morning phone-in show on 5 Live.

0:18.9

So it's quite, it's quite well kitted out, if I'm honest.

0:22.3

But that has made me think we need to rebrand our old remoter voter-voter gimmick and turning it

0:28.0

into remoter worker so you can send us your examples of when you've had to relocate to an odd

0:34.0

place for a strange reason. You know where to send them? Newscast at BBC.co.uk.

0:39.6

Or you can WhatsApp us on 0-330-123-9-4-80.

0:46.3

And I'm just thinking some of the remoter voter entries

0:48.8

were really exotic and interesting.

0:51.7

So I'm looking forward to reading these ones already. And actually, I'm just

0:56.3

thinking about this, people being in the wrong place theme. It's going to continue all week. So

1:00.1

we had Chris sat in my seat yesterday in Brussels, where I spent many, many, many hours reading

1:06.0

Brexit documents. And then tomorrow we're going to be in the BBC Radio Theatre for our fifth anniversary

1:11.9

celebration of Newscast becoming a daily podcast. So actually we're going to be popping up in all

1:16.9

sorts of places. So that definitely is a theme of the week. Right. Some things do stay the same,

1:22.0

though, which is us bringing you insight and analysis of the world's most important news stories, which we will do on this

1:29.1

episode of Newscast. Newscast from the BBC. I like landscape. I don't think I'm being rude.

1:35.3

Japping, unemployed people who are overweight. That is not the agenda. It's the fun police working overtime.

1:41.3

The star is born. Elon.

...

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