China says it will fight US tariff raises 'until the end.' Also: Iran confirms nuclear talks with the United States, we hear from Ukrainians under Russian occupation, plus new insights into the Titanic's final hours
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles, and at 13.30 GMT on Tuesday, the 8th of April, these are our main stories. China vows to play rough with the US on tariffs, and we fact-check some of President Trump's claims on trade. Iran has confirmed it will hold talks about its nuclear programme with US officials, but what could that mean?
And the BBC gets rare access into the lives of the more than three million Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territories.
Also in this podcast... Those engineers are working to keep the lights and the power working to the end. They held the chaos at bay.
MUSIC
We will fight until the end. A definitive message from the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson on Tuesday as Washington and Beijing inch closer to what many fear will be an all-out trade war. President Trump has said he'll slap on an additional 50% tariff on Chinese imports if it doesn't cancel its own retaliatory taxes on US goods.
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Chapter 2: How is China responding to US tariffs?
As a reminder, last week he announced a 34% levy on goods from China entering the United States. Stephen McDonnell in Beijing told me more.
Chapter 3: What is the impact of the US-China trade war?
No sign at all that Beijing will be caving in following the threats from Donald Trump. I mean, it's funny, I saw those comments from him overnight and it did strike me as wishful thinking on his part if he just thought the Chinese government was going to turn on this so quickly, especially when they're accusing the US of blackmail. They've been ridiculing the whole idea of...
that the original Trump tariffs were reciprocal anyway, saying that this is the act of a bully. They're saying that if Donald Trump makes good on his latest threat, well, they've got their own countermeasures, which they'll reveal. So how it might play out over the next couple of days, well, as you mentioned, today's the deadline. China isn't backing down.
So we're going to see another 50% tariff placed on all Chinese goods going into the US. That brings it up to 104%. I mean, it's quite high. So then we're going to have some sort of countermeasures from China. These countermeasures obviously are going to hit... Any US companies that want to sell into the huge Chinese market hurt US consumers.
But also, you know, it's interesting to think of what they might be. There's a journalist from Xinhua here, Xinhua Wire Service, who on his private social media account has said he's been told that what it could include is... well, includes significant increases on US agricultural products, so soybeans and sorghum, a complete ban on the import of US poultry into China.
Now, all of that's going to hit straight into the Trump heartland. a suspension of Sino-US cooperation on fentanyl-related issues and a ban on the import of all US movies into China. So no sign it's going to slow down this trade war.
And how popular amongst ordinary Chinese people are these pretty robust actions from Beijing?
You know, of course, people want to be able to buy stuff from the US and they've said they'll change their spending patterns. But really, there's pretty good Chinese electronic goods now, you know, cars and what have you. So they don't necessarily need the products from the US. I don't think it's such a nationalist response here, at least not yet. It's more just based on price.
And if these US goods are priced out of the market, people just won't buy them because they've got other alternatives.
Stephen McDonnell. While that's all going on, a war of words is also taking place. A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Lin Jian, has accused the US Vice President, J.D. Vance, of being ignorant and impolite in reference to an interview Mr. Vance gave on Fox News last week in which he referred to Chinese people as peasants. Here's the moment on Fox and Friends.
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Chapter 4: What are the Iranian nuclear talks?
Chapter 5: What is life like for Ukrainians under Russian occupation?
Yeah. So another one of his worst offenders is China. And particularly on that, when he talked about the U.S. trade deficit with China, which is how much it sends to China compared to how much it takes in. President Trump said this yesterday.
A tremendous deficit problem with China. They have a surplus of at least a trillion dollars a year. I think it's like a trillion one.
So he said the trade deficit, which is the amount of goods that the US takes in compared to the amount of goods it sends to China, was a trillion dollars. Now, the US does have a trade deficit with China, but it's nowhere near a trillion dollars. In 2024, so last year, it was $295 billion in terms of the amount of goods the US takes in compared to the amount of goods it sends to China.
It's never been anywhere near a trillion dollars. It's not entirely clear where he got the trillion dollar number from, but he might be talking about global trade. So globally... China does export a trillion dollars more goods than it takes in.
So President Trump could have got his numbers confused with the global trade, but in the Oval Office and on Air Force One previously, he's been speaking specifically about US trade. So that claim is heavily exaggerated.
That was Jake Horton. The BBC has gained rare insight into the lives of more than three million Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territory. We've spoken to Maria, not her real name, about her work as an activist and member of a women's resistance group. For her safety, Maria's words have been revoiced by one of our colleagues.
Everything is covered in Russian propaganda. Billboards with the Putin face, with Putin quotes, with heroes, as they say, of special military operation. So we are creating leaflets with our messages to Russian occupiers and Russian soldiers. We are changing the design of Russian ruble banknotes, adding our message for them. You are in Ukraine, so don't forget about this.
We are trying to burn Russian flags, Russian propaganda. We are spreading newspaper with real news, because there are a lot of people here, you know, who can't reach real news.
Vitaly Shevchenko is the Russia editor at BBC Monitoring. He told us how risky it is for people like Maria to oppose occupying Russian forces.
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Chapter 6: What new insights do we have about the Titanic's final hours?
Russia is pursuing a campaign of eradicating anything and everything remotely Ukrainian. In schools, textbooks are Russian. And the message this spread is that Ukraine is not a real state and Russia has liberated you from this neo-Nazi government in Kiev. If you don't have a Russian passport, you can be stripped of your parental rights. You can't get hospital treatment.
Your car can be taken away. If you're travelling down the road, there's a roadblock and the Russian soldiers ask you for your Russian passport. You don't have it, that's it. Say goodbye to your car. So this campaign of pressure and repression and intimidation, it works on a million levels.
Vitaly Shevchenko. Many listeners will probably think they have an idea of the final hours of the Titanic, but new analysis has revealed fresh insight into the doomed passenger ship's final hours. An exact 3D replica shows the violence of how the ship ripped in two as it sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912 and what was happening when it did. Our science editor Rebecca Murrell has more.
The digital scan reveals the Titanic in its entirety, as if the ocean has drained away. The wreck's immense bow is sitting upright on the sea floor, but 600 metres away the stern is a heap of mangled metal, badly damaged after the ship split in two.
The 3D replica has been studied in detail for a new National Geographic Atlantic Productions documentary, with particular interest in the boiler rooms. Eyewitness accounts from survivors said the lights of the ship were still on as it sank, and the scan tallies with this. Some of the huge boilers are bent inwards, suggesting they were running hot as they sank beneath the cold water.
And elsewhere on the wreck, an open valve indicates that steam was still flowing to generate electricity. This would have been thanks to a team of engineers who stayed behind. All were lost, among the more than 1,500 who perished in the disaster. But their heroic actions saved many lives. Park Stevenson is a Titanic analyst.
Those engineers are working to keep the lights and the power working to the end to give the crew time to launch the boat safely with some light instead of an absolute darkness. You know, they held the chaos at bay as long as possible.
Rebekah Morrell.
Still to come in this podcast.
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