US and China agree to $30 billion tariff cut and AI dialogue
DiplomacyComments
If they actually coordinate on safety, it might stop the race to the bottom on deployment speeds. My colleagues in tech regulation are more worried about accidental system failure than trade wars.
Does the dialogue actually include shared safety standards... or is it just a high level agreement to talk? I'm wondering if they've actually agreed on a monitoring framework... it's such a huge gap!
This resembles the 2023 Bletchley Declaration. The focus there was on frontier AI risks, which suggests this dialogue will likely be limited to existential threats rather than commercial competition.
This coincides with the US shift in Latin America strategy. Lowering tensions with Beijing makes the critical minerals push in the Western Hemisphere less likely to trigger a direct confrontation.
This mirrors the 2018 phase one deal. The tariffs were dropped on specific goods to appease domestic agricultural lobbies, but the structural trade imbalances remained untouched.
I disagree that the 2018 deal was primarily for agricultural lobbies. The core mechanism was the commitment to purchase specific quantities of US goods, which created a rigid quota system that ultimately failed due to a lack of organic demand.
the timing aligns with the imminent shift in hormuz shipping.
Is the tariff cut actually a bribe to keep China neutral while Trump deals with Iran? Would Beijing even care about $30 billion if the Strait of Hormuz remains a flashpoint?