In Asian media this week: “Reciprocal” tariffs savage poor nations. Plus: Auto levies hand “keys to the future” to China; Myanmar military declares ceasefire but continues fighting; Black carbon pollution a threat to glaciers; US, India in nuclear power deal; Bitter times for Darjeeling tea industry.
Asian nations have been treated severely in Donald Trump’s sweeping round of so-called reciprocal tariffs, with poor countries Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam topping the list with tariffs of just below 50 per cent.
China’s tariff rate is 34 per cent but it is added to the 20 per cent Trump has already imposed, alleging it has not done enough to combat the deadly drug, fentanyl.
The rates for other Asian countries include: Cambodia, 49 per cent; Laos, 48 per cent; Vietnam, 46 per cent; Thailand, 36 per cent; Indonesia and Taiwan, 32 per cent; India, 26 per cent; South Korea, 25 per cent; Japan, Brunei and Malaysia, 24 per cent; the Philippines, 17 percent; Timor Leste and Singapore, 10 per cent.
Singapore’s The Straits Times said the harshest burden fell on Asian economies.
Asian countries were over-represented in what US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week called the “Dirty 15” nations that imposed steep tariffs and trade barriers on US goods.
The US has not disclosed the names but The Indian Express compiled a list: China, the European Union, Mexico, Vietnam. Ireland, Germany, Taiwan, Japan. South Korea, Canada, India, Thailand, Italy, Switzerland, Malaysia and Indonesia. Nine of the countries are Asian.
The Jakarta Post noted that such countries as Vietnam and Thailand were heavy exporters to the US, having benefitted as companies shifted production from China to avoid US levies.
Thailand’s trade surplus with the US is $45 billion, Bangkok Post reported. It cited one assessment that the tariff could shrink Thai GDP growth by 1.2 percentage points from a forecast 2.5 per cent.
Malaysia’s New Straits Times quoted a Government statement that Malaysia had a trade surplus with the US because many US companies had operated there for decades.
The strongest criticism came from Beijing, with China Daily promptly publishing an editorial saying the US was destabilising the global trade framework in the vain hope of regaining lost pre-eminence.
The Diplomat, the Asian online newsmagazine, said there were strong signs tariffs the US claimed foreign nations imposed were basically made up. The US took a nation’s trade surplus with the US, expressed it as a percentage of its exports to the US and passed it off as a tariff rate.
It was a sign of spectacular mendacity and incompetence, The Diplomat said.
China now ‘global leader’ in EV design
Donald Trump’s 25 per cent auto tariffs might well have an unintended – and, for Trump, undesirable – consequence: handing the keys to the future of the car industry to China.
The risk of this happening is laid out in an analysis published by Singapore’s The Straits Times.
“[The] promised 25 per cent tariff on auto imports… takes an axe to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that aren’t already dominated by Beijing,” the article says.
The biggest losers would be South Korea and Japan, which account for one-third of cars imported into the US, says the analysis by Bloomberg climate an energy columnist David Frickling. They are also crucial to the development of EVs because their companies produce more than a quarter of EV batteries.
They are the only challengers to China’s dominance of the battery market.
South Korean and Japanese EV battery customers include US carmakers. America needs the Asian business to succeed, the piece says.
But these companies are integrated into domestic auto industries that will struggle to survive if they lose exports.
“Global supply chains are held together with strings of gossamer,” the analysis says. “With the latest tariffs, Mr Trump has driven a monster truck straight through this one.”
China’s global leadership in EVs is acknowledged in an editorial in The Japan Times newspaper.
“Leading this remarkable development is Build Your Dreams, the Shenzhen-based carmaker better known as BYD,” the paper says. “Last year the company overtook Tesla. Its success reflects a new approach… one that focuses not on the car itself but on the transportation experience.”
Japan, the paper says, has one of the least developed EV markets in the world.
“If Japan continues to lag, it won’t be competitive in the global market,” it says.
“The country that masters EV technologies will become the global lead in a suite of critical new technologies. That nation will also be seen as leading the green transition.
“It looks like China might be that nation.”
‘We heard the screams’ – volunteers bear burden of earthquake rescue
An earthquake strikes, emergency services are mobilised and heavy equipment is brought in to help rescue trapped survivors. That is what happened in Bangkok when the March 28 earthquake destroyed a high-rise building. But not in neighbouring Myanmar, where wide areas of towns and cities were flattened and where, within six days, the death toll had passed 3,000.
There, the burden of rescue work fell to volunteers equipped with basic tools. The country is a military dictatorship but the army was not called out to assist. Soldiers obstructed the volunteers and the military continued fighting the civil war, carrying out air and artillery raids against areas held by the resistance.
“We have no experience with earthquakes,” a volunteer told Frontier Myanmar, a Burmese exile online magazine. “But we heard the screams of people calling for help… and we decided to go and rescue them.”
But first they had to get permission, Frontier Myanmar reported. About 20 soldiers blocked them for an hour before they were allowed to enter the ruined building.
The Irrawaddy, another exile news site, said on Wednesday the junta had conducted at least 21 airstrikes and artillery attacks since the earthquake. That number was expected to rise as more reports were verified, it said.
Two of the attacks were on civilian areas near Sagaing, close to the earthquake’s epicentre.
The junta admitted firing on a Chinese Red Cross convoy carrying aid to stricken areas. The military claimed, The Irrawaddy reported, it had failed to notify authorities of its travel plans.
But the Mizzima news site said the convoy had reportedly contacted the military before departure. It was now being protected by resistance forces.
In Bangkok, the number confirmed dead in the collapsed high-rise building rose to 15 and Bangkok Post reported a further 14 bodies had been detected but had not yet been removed.
The Post also reported that steel bars used in the construction were sub-standard and had failed technical tests. The Government had ordered an investigation into a Chinese contractor working on the project. It would also investigate all other projects awarded to the company, including sections of a high-speed railway being built from Bangkok to the far north of the country.
In Myanmar, the military eventually declared a ceasefire from April 2 to April 22 but the Myanmar Now news site reported resistance forces as saying airstrikes and ground offensives continued in parts of Kachin state, in the north of the country.
A spokesman for the Kachin Independence Army said: “We saw that they released a ceasefire statement. However, the fighting hasn’t stopped.”
China, India biggest emitters of damaging pollutant
Carbon dioxide is the biggest threat to the Earth’s climate. Take away the “dioxide” and we’re left with carbon. But we still have a huge problem: black carbon is a super-pollutant that poses a great danger to the environment and to people’s health and livelihoods.
Black carbon is found in the tiny PM2.5 particles that cause discomfort, ill-health and even death, especially across Asia. It is also hastening the melting of glaciers, from the Himalayas to the Arctic.
A feature story in the South China Morning Post says black carbon absorbs heat with deadly efficiency. “When it settles on snowy and icy surfaces, it darkens them, accelerating the absorption of heat and triggering glacial melt,” the story says.
A new report, by a body called the Clean Air Fund, names China and India as the biggest emitters of black carbon, the paper says. Their power plants, steel and cement factories, brick kilns, even rice mills and sugar factories, are pumping out the pollutant in staggering amounts.
But the biggest source, in China and India, is people’s homes, where traditional fuels are still used for cooking and heating. (In Russia, wildfires are the biggest source; in the US it is transport).
As well as melting glaciers, black carbon disrupts monsoonal rains, fuels extreme heat and worsens flooding, the story says.
“Nowhere is this crisis more acute than in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, where some 240 million people depend on the glaciers for water, food and energy,” it says. “Stretching across eight nations, including China and India, this region’s glaciers feed Asia’s 10 largest river system, from the Ganges to the Mekong.
“But the ice is disappearing at an unprecedented rate.
“Black carbon has a fleeting lifespan of just days to weeks. Yet its immediate impact is devastating.”
New pact for building small reactors
The US Energy Department has given regulatory approval for an American company, Holtec International, to design and build nuclear reactors in India.
India’s Financial Express newspaper said Holtec would be allowed to share small modular reactor (SMR) technology with three Indian companies but not with Indian Government agencies, as India had not given non-proliferation assurances for them.
The US had made it clear that the technology could be used only for peaceful purposes, the paper said.
The approval was a breakthrough in a longstanding India-US nuclear pact.
The deal opened up the possibility of the US and India joining forces to compete with China on SMR development, The Indian Express newspaper said. Beijing was working on a plan to seize global leadership in SMRs.
“China sees SMRs as a tool of its diplomatic outreach in the Global South that could shake up the SMR industry, just as it has done in the electric vehicle sector,” the paper said.
Neither the US nor India could compete with China on its own – India lacked the technology and America was hampered by high labour costs and a growing protectionist mood.
India has 24 operational nuclear reactors but nuclear power generates only 3 per cent of the country’s electricity generation, said Jitendra Singha, an Indian Government science and technology minister. But a decision to open nuclear generation to private sector players was a hallmark of this year’s budget, he said in an OpEd piece published by The Indian Express.
The Government had allocated 2 billion rupees (about A$37 million) for SMR research and development, he said.
Production drops, workers leave prime tea district
Darjeeling is often hailed as the champagne of teas but it no longer commands a champagne price. The growers, and the workers who pluck the leaves, are going through bitter times.
Tea bushes were first planted in the Darjeeling district in the 1840s and the tea’s reputation has blossomed over the decades. One author said it was the indisputable jewel in India’s tea-producing crown.
Devoted Darjeeling tea-lovers would be dismayed to learn that production is plummeting – from 14.49 million kg in 1990 to 5.6 million kg last year.
According to a story in The Straits Times, the decline has been caused by an unfavourable brew of ageing bushes with falling yields and a shortage of labour, with young people go elsewhere for better-paid work.
The production cost per kg of Darjeeling is 650 rupees (about A$12.05). The auction price last year was 394 rupees (about A$7.30).
Pluckers earn 250 rupees (A#4.60) a day for eight hours of hard work.
Munna Subba, 53, who has worked on the tea estates for 14 years, said it is a difficult job. “There are snakes, scorpions and other wild animals,” she said. “And when it rains, it rains a lot.”
Her daughter Tina has gone to work in Israel as a caregiver. She sends 12,000 rupees (A$225) home each month – more than her mother can earn.
One plantation owner said rising aspirations, rather than low pay, were driving workers away. “A person who is educated wants a better lifestyle,” he said. “They don’t want to work in those muddy conditions.”
Grower Rishi Saria said Darjeeling had to produce better teas that can fetch higher prices – and then pay better wages. “There is no way production can increase magically,” he said.
India and the US have taken a big step towards a nuclear energy partnership.
David Armstrong is an Australian journalist and editor with decades of experience, including as editor-in-chief of The Australian, editor of The Bulletin and The Canberra Times and deputy editor the Daily Telegraph in Australia. He is also former editor and editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post, former president of the Bangkok Post company, former chair of the Phnom Penh Post company and is current chair of ucanews.com.