China warns Trump against trade war, says protectionism leads nowhere

ISTANBUL

China on Monday warned US President Donald Trump that trade protectionism "leads nowhere," urging him to avoid escalating tensions into a trade war, according to state media reports.

"There are no winners in trade wars or tariff wars," Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told reporters in Beijing.

Beijing’s comments came in response to Trump’s announcement regarding the possibility of imposing 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports.

Trump has already enacted a 10% additional tariff on Chinese imports, citing the continuous flow of fentanyl into the US through Mexico and Canada.

In retaliation, China imposed its own tariffs of up to 15% on US imports, targeting primarily the energy sector and agricultural equipment, which came into effect on Monday.

Although Trump granted a one-month reprieve to Canada and Mexico regarding tariffs, he proceeded with the tariffs on Chinese imports, with no apparent signs of progress toward a trade deal.

According to a report by the Financial Times, experts in Beijing believe that "talks might have stalled because Trump was demanding co-operation on other fronts, such as pressuring on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and or ceding ownership of short video platform TikTok to an American buyer."

Fentanyl, a deadly opioid, has become a significant contributor to the deaths of Americans aged 18-45.

China-US rivalry in artificial intelligence

About the Chinese open-source large model chatbot DeepSeek, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said China "actively embraces intelligent transformation, vigorously promotes the innovative development and safety of AI, and supports and encourages enterprises to innovate independently, making positive contributions to the global development of artificial intelligence."

"China opposes drawing ideological lines, overstretching the concept of national security, and politicizing the economic and technology issues," Guo said, adding that Beijing "is willing to strengthen exchanges and cooperation in AI with all parties."

Notably, South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan have advised their public employees to stop using DeepSeek, which has sparked a global tech sell-off and is reportedly the most downloaded free application in the US.

Investors were surprised by how the low-cost, open-source generative AI tool was able to compete with leading artificial intelligence apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Backed by the Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, DeepSeek launched its DeepSeek-R1 large language model on Jan. 20.

DeepSeek also suffered cyberattacks, which Chinese state-run media said predominantly originated from US IP addresses.