Latest news with #美国
South China Morning Post
4 days ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Hard to pivot: why China's exporters struggle to sell at home despite trade war
A Chinese company that exports straws and food packaging materials spent 30 million yuan (US$4.16 million) last year to comply with stricter environmental standards in Western countries. Although the costs to upgrade its production facilities were steep – roughly equivalent to the profits the firm would make selling tens of millions of straws – the potential in the US and European markets seemed to justify the investment. Advertisement And they were right – in theory. By betting on the growing environmental awareness among Western consumers, Soton Daily Necessities, based in Zhejiang province, went the extra mile – adopting a tech- and capital-intensive strategy to ensure that even a simple straw could be good for the planet. The only thing the company had failed to plan for was April's trade war, and the precarious situation it would unleash on unsuspecting exporters. 'Anyone with sound logic would not expect a US president to go to such an extreme,' Soton's deputy president, Mao Bin, told local media in Zhejiang. Advertisement
South China Morning Post
21-05-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
‘What if AI had eyes': meet Chinese firm Xreal, Google's partner in AR glasses project
Chinese augmented reality (AR) firm Xreal is back in the spotlight via a partnership with Google to create the first eyewear powered by the US tech giant's Android XR operating system, intensifying competition in the nascent market for spectacles supported by artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The start-up 's venture with Google, dubbed Project Aura, was among the key announcements made on Tuesday at the opening of the US internet search company's annual I/O developer conference, which concluded on Wednesday. Project Aura – with the tagline 'what if AI had eyes' – features a pair of lightweight, tethered Xreal AR glasses powered by Qualcomm 's Snapdragon processor. The smart glasses will offer a dual-mode augmented reality experience; optical see-through, which is a direct overlay of digital content onto a real-world view; and virtual see-through, which blends camera-captured images with digital elements, according to Google and Xreal. Without providing more details, Xreal founder and chief executive Xu Chi said the new AR glasses are expected to hit the consumer market later in 2025 or early next year, according to his interview with Bloomberg.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Yahoo
Ocean patrols and narcotics playbooks: How a Florida city is tackling human smuggling
A human smuggler tells a potential customer in an audio message in Mandarin that there are now two potential sea routes for illegally entering the U.S. One is to depart by boat near the U.S.-Mexico border and then come ashore near Los Angeles. The second departs Nassau in the Bahamas by boat for the Miami area. The smuggler says in the audio, obtained by NBC News from a potential smuggling customer, that enforcement off the coast of Florida has increased, but quickly reassures the potential customer, 'You won't get caught.' Not so, authorities say. Out on a labyrinth of canals in Coral Gables, Florida, police are on the lookout for fishermen who might be spotters or boats carrying more weight than normal. Officials have been on heightened alert because the city's mangrove-shrouded waterways have become a landing destination for groups of Chinese migrants seeking illegal entry into the United States. With the southern border a less viable option, these migrants have found Florida via the Bahamas to be a workaround. But authorities have been cracking down and are seeing a decrease in smuggling attempts over the last few months. The number of Chinese nationals apprehended by Florida-based Customs and Border Patrol officers has climbed and dipped in recent years — 406 in 2020, 616 the year after, then 483 in 2024. But there have been no known smuggling attempts in the Coral Gables area since late January of this year. Local law enforcement officials admit they aren't sure if that's due to increased enforcement, Trump's policies that have had a similar impact on border crossings — or if smugglers have simply gotten more sophisticated. 'We believe we have kind of a handle on our side,' said Coral Gables Police Chief Edward J. Hudak. '[But] where is it going to go next? [Smuggling] is like water. Water is going to go wherever it can go.' The drop comes after two high-profile human smuggling incidents in the affluent city and another just off shore since the start of the year have resulted in the apprehension of nearly 50 Chinese migrants. Another incident appears to have occured on Dec. 19, 2024, almost a full month before Coral Gables police made their first human smuggling stop. Surveillance footage obtained by NBC News from a neighbor's door camera shows a group of 18 Asian migrants walking into a waiting U-Haul van parked next to a waterway, as dozens of vehicles drive by. No police are seen, and there's no record of the apparent migrants or alleged smuggler ever being apprehended. Overall, encounters at the southwest border are down 93% compared to this time last year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and smugglers have pivoted to sea routes off the coasts of California and Florida, experts tell NBC News. More than 35,000 Chinese migrants crossed the southern border in 2023, but crossings have dropped due to stricter enforcement. Last year, apprehensions of Chinese nationals at the border reached a record high. The Bahamas has quickly become a strategic departure point for many of these migrants coming ashore in Florida due to that country's lifting of visa restrictions for Chinese citizens. 'These human smugglers are being more creative,' said Leland Lazarus, the associate director of national security at Florida International University's Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy. 'They see one route dropping off in the southwest border, and they're trying maritime routes more frequently.' Police say it's a challenge to patrol the intricate waterways that snake through Coral Gables as well as the yawning stretch of ocean just outside, but they do have a past playbook. The area has been a smuggling hot spot for decades, first for drugs and now, it appears, for humans. 'We've just dusted off our playbook from the 1980s and 1990s, when the smugglers were bringing in narco narcotics,' said Hudak. 'But this is human cargo now, so that's really changed the game for us.' Hudak says the sea-lanes used by human smugglers now are the same ones used for drugs previously. And the smugglers' knack for evolving and evading authorities also appears unchanged. 'There are ingenious ways to get narcotics into this country, and there are ingenious ways to get human beings into this country,' said Hudak. Further communication between the smuggler and his potential customer offers a glimpse at how some criminals may be managing to stay one step ahead of authorities. Rather than using the traditional panga boats or speedboats to ferry migrants across seas, the smuggler says he's now using yachts. 'Small boats will get in trouble,' he writes to the potential customer in Mandarin. 'The big boat won't draw as much attention.' Included in his message was a four-second clip of a docked yacht. The price for the journey, including use of the luxury vessel, was $35,000. Law enforcement and some residents tell NBC News the human smuggling busts in Coral Gables weren't isolated incidents, and they believe many more migrants have been smuggled into the area without detection. 'This was not a first time on either one of these,' Hudak said, referring to the two smuggling operations. 'People have seen things in the past and didn't say anything.' This article was originally published on
Bloomberg
09-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
China's Rare Earth Exports Drop as Trade War Crimps Supply
Chinese exports of rare earths dropped last month, after the government tightened permits in order to regulate the supply of critical minerals to the US. Overseas sales fell 16% from March to 4,785 tons, China's statistics bureau said on Friday, although that was still higher than the year-ago figure.
Wall Street Journal
08-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
芬太尼危机为美中贸易谈判提供契机
You may also like Close Created with sketchtool. Up Next Close Created with sketchtool. Embed code copied to clipboard Copy Link Copy Embed Facebook Twitter Close Created with sketchtool. Your browser does not support HTML5 video. 0:00 Play Created with sketchtool. Paused Mute Created with sketchtool. 0:00 / 1:13 Share Created with sketchtool. Closed Captions Active Created with sketchtool. Fullscreen Inactive Created with sketchtool. Keep hovering to play 美国总统特朗普在财长贝森特与中方官员在瑞士举行会晤前就关税问题回答了记者提问。封面图片来源：据中美两国的知情人士透露，中国就芬太尼问题与美国接触，为两国之间的贸易谈判创造了契机，并为本周末在瑞士举行双边会晤铺平了道路。 几周以来，美国和中国一直在寻找途径，以缓和目前针锋相对的、相当于贸易禁运的局面。这些知情人士说，4月底，中国向特朗普政府提出了一些问题，试图弄清楚特朗普希望中国如何打击用于制造芬太尼的化学原料的贩运。作为回应，白宫向北京方面提供了一份建议清单。
