
China's President Xi Jinping to speak at opening of China-CELAC Forum on Tuesday
SHENZHEN, China, May 11 (Reuters) - China's President Xi Jinping will attend the opening of and deliver a speech at the China-CELAC Forum in Beijing on May 13, China's Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday.
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi will preside over the meeting with foreign ministers or representatives of countries in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the ministry said.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
North Korea will always stand with Russia, leader Kim tells Putin
SEOUL, June 12 (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said in a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country will always stand with Moscow, state media reported on Thursday. In a message for Russia Day, a patriotic holiday celebrating Russia's independence, Kim called Putin his "dearest comrade" and praised their bilateral relations as a "genuine relationship between comrades-in-arms," KCNA reported. "It is an unshakable will of the government of the DPRK and of my own steadfastly to carry on the DPRK-Russia relations," Kim was quoted as saying. The DPRK stands for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. KCNA reported on Wednesday that Kim had sent congratulations on Russia Day to Putin. Earlier this year, Pyongyang for the first time confirmed that it had sent troops to fight for Russia in the war in Ukraine under orders from leader Kim Jong Un after months of silence.\


Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
Bessent says US may 'roll the date forward' for some after 90-day tariff pause ends
June 11 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday said the Trump administration is prepared to "roll the date forward" with trading partners negotiating in good faith if the deadline marking the end of the 90-day pause on President Donald Trump's reciprocal tariffs is reached with no deal. "It is highly likely that those countries - or trading blocs as is the case with the EU - who are negotiating in good faith, we will roll the date forward to continue the good-faith negotiations," Bessent told the House Ways and Means Committee. "If someone is not negotiating, then we will not." Bessent's remarks, in response to a question from a Democratic lawmaker, marked the first time a Trump administration official has indicated some flexibility around the expiration date for the pause. That date - July 8 - is now just four weeks away, and so far the White House has struck only one preliminary deal with a major foreign trading partner affected by the pause, Britain. A deal struck on Tuesday in London with China to de-escalate that bilateral trade war is proceeding on a separate track and timeline. The White House did not immediately respond to a question about whether Trump shared Bessent's view. Trump announced the pause on April 9, a week after unveiling "Liberation Day" tariffs against nearly all U.S. trading partners that proved to be so unexpectedly large and sweeping that it sent global financial markets into near panic. The S&P 500 Index (.SPX), opens new tab plunged more than 12% in four days for its heftiest run of losses since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Investors were so rattled they bailed out of safe-haven U.S. Treasury securities, sending bond yields rocketing higher. The dollar sank. Markets started their recovery on April 9 when Trump unexpectedly announced the pause. A further leg up in the recovery followed in early May when the Trump team reached a preliminary deal to dial back the triple-digit tariff rates it had imposed on goods from China. The events have given rise to what some on Wall Street have parodied as the "TACO" trade - an acronym for Trump Always Chickens Out. "The only time the market has reacted positively is when the administration is in retreat from key policy areas," Democratic Representative Don Beyer of Virginia told Bessent before pressing him on what should be expected at the end of the next deadline next month. "As I have said repeatedly there are 18 important trading partners. We are working toward deals with those," Bessent said before going on to signal a willingness to offer extensions to those negotiating in good faith.


The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Trump trade deal shows how vital China's rare-earth metals are to US defense firms
The draft trade agreement with China announced by Donald Trump on Wednesday would ease concerns from top US military suppliers about rare-earth metals and magnets that, if cut off permanently, could hobble production of everything from smart bombs to fighter jets to submarines and other weapons in the US arsenal. While the deal has not yet been finalised, it may reassure major defense companies such as Lockheed Martin, the largest US user of samarium – a rare-earth metal used in military-grade magnets – whose supply is entirely controlled by China. The issue of China's export restrictions on the metals and magnets was so important that Trump specifically mentioned them as part of his announcement of a broader trade agreement with China that would reduce US tariffs to 55% and Chinese tariffs to 10%. 'Our deal with China is done, subject to final approval with President Xi and me,' Trump wrote. 'Full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China.' Rare earths are crucial to the production of F-35 fighter jets, Virginia- and Columbia-class nuclear-powered submarines, Tomahawk missiles, radar systems, unmanned aerial vehicles and smart bombs, according to Gracelin Baskaran of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a thinktank. China in April imposed export restrictions on seven rare earth elements during the tough negotiations over Trump's new tariffs. China also targeted the aerospace and defense industries by limiting 15 US entities with ties to the industry from receiving dual-use goods. 'The United States is already on the back foot when it comes to manufacturing these defense technologies,' Baskaran said in an interview published by CSIS. 'China is rapidly expanding its munitions production and acquiring advanced weapons systems and equipment at a pace five to six times faster than the United States. While China is preparing with a wartime mindset, the United States continues to operate under peacetime conditions.' Trump has amassed a team of foreign policy China hawks, including a number who have warned that the US should focus more on the pacing threat posed by China over the coming decades instead of current conflicts in Ukraine or the Middle East. 'Even before the latest restrictions, the US defense industrial base struggled with limited capacity and lacked the ability to scale up production to meet defense technology demands,' she continued. 'Further bans on critical minerals inputs will only widen the gap, enabling China to strengthen its military capabilities more quickly than the United States.' China and the United States had agreed last month in Geneva to pause the implementation of sky-high tariffs that would have delivered a severe economic blow to manufacturers and consumers in the US, as well as exporters in China. But China maintained export licenses on rare-earth metals used by both defense producers and carmakers that threatened to upend global supply chains and imperil production in the United States. In particular, China has a stranglehold on the production and export of samarium, a magnet used in combination with cobalt to provide highly durable magnets used to withstand the intense temperatures in military-grade tech. China produces the entire world's supply of the rare-earth metal. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion In particular, the magnets are important for the production of guided missiles, satellite-guided 'smart bombs', and aircrafts, including fighter jets, according to Apex Magnets, a supplier. Those supplies of weapons have been depleted through deliveries of missiles and other ordnance to Ukraine and to the Israeli military. Pentagon planners and other officials in the administration of Joe Biden, regularly squared off over whether foreign weapons deliveries expose a US vulnerability in case it faced off with a major military power. In order to break the deadlock, secretary of state Marco Rubio also abruptly announced plans to cancel hundreds of thousands of visas for Chinese students in the United States. While publicly that was said as a plan to root out Chinese spies in US higher education, Axios reported that the visa ban was also motivated by China's obstinance on resuming rare earths exports. The breakthrough comes as Trump is planning to display US military prowess at a parade in Washington DC this weekend that has been seen as an attempt to flex American muscle and reinforce the US president's bonafides as a supporter of the military. Trump in 2019 ordered the Pentagon to find new sources of procuring rare earth minerals, in particular samarium, because the US did not have the capacity to produce them domestically. The initiative was 'essential to the national defense', he said then.