The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | April 12th, 2025: Can China Survive A Tariff War? & Russia Launches Spring Offensive
Sat, 12 Apr 2025
In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: President Trump pulls back on tariffs—except when it comes to China. Gordon Chang joins us to explain what this economic clash means for the global economy—and why it could hurt China more than the United States. On the battlefield, both Russia and Ukraine have launched fresh offensives, with fighting intensifying on multiple fronts. George Barros from the Institute for the Study of War breaks down what’s driving the new surge in combat—and what could come next. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What led to President Trump's tariff changes on China?
Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. It's been a crazy week, if you haven't noticed. I suspect you've noticed. We'll kick things off with President Trump doing a U-turn on global tariffs, but not when it comes to China. In fact, he's ramping things up, slapping a 104% tariff on Chinese goods.
And Beijing, well, they're already retaliating. Gordon Chang joins us to talk about what this economic showdown means for China and for us. Later in the show, we'll bring you the latest from the battlefield. Both Russia and Ukraine have reportedly launched new offensives, raising the stakes on multiple fronts.
Chapter 2: How is China retaliating against U.S. tariffs?
George Boros from the Institute for the Study of War, he joins us with the latest on where things stand and where they could be headed. But first, today's Situation Report Spotlight. The past week has been a wild ride. That's putting it mildly. Markets bounced around as President Trump hit pause on his global tariff push, except when it comes to China.
After Beijing fired back with 84% tariffs on U.S. goods, Trump responded with a brutal 104% tariff on Chinese imports. That one's still in place. Now, this could spell serious trouble for China. Their economy depends heavily on exports, and if those slow down, well, the pain could run deep. But just how much damage are we talking? Joining us now is someone who's been warning about this for years.
And that, of course, would be good friend of the show, Gordon Chang. He's the author of Plan Red, China's Project to Destroy America. And you can check him out on apps at Gordon G. Chang. Gordon, thanks very much again for joining us here on The Situation Report. Always excellent to talk to you. We've been on a roller coaster ride here when it comes to tariffs, particularly with China.
Chapter 3: What are the implications of the tariff war for China's economy?
Give me your sort of your 30,000 foot view on what's been taking place over the past week or so and where you think it might be going.
A lot of presidents have let the China trade matters slide, and Trump had the courage to take this on. We hold all the high cards. We're the bigger economy. China is the trade surplus country. They ran a $295.4 billion merchandise trade surplus with us last year. So they've got everything to lose, and we don't.
But Xi Jinping believes that he can intimidate President Trump into surrendering preemptively because they're trying to get Wall Street, C-Suite, Main Street to put pressure on Trump to cave in. I don't think Trump will do that because we know on Wednesday, Trump imposed tariffs of 145% on China. And that's a real demonstration of political will.
I think the Chinese are going to take a long time to come to the table. This is going to be a lot of friction, a lot of tension, but we need to get this done and we need to get this done on our terms.
What do you think they make or how do they interpret the pause? The 90 day pause has just been put into place. Do they look at that as a sign of weakness on the White House's part or are they interpreting it in some other fashion, do you think?
I think that they understood that Trump reacted to the bond market by the Japanese dumping bonds. So that's one way. But I think ultimately, they realized there's a real danger in this. And that is, the US is going to come to terms with a lot of countries. Japan, South Korea, the EU. That's going to leave China out in the cold.
Because as senior Trump officials have been saying this week, those countries that come to terms with us early are going to get the best deals. And China is sitting on the outside because they can't pick up the phone, which means they're going to be pretty much in trouble. Remember, these guys in Beijing, they're not going to be selling a lot of stuff to the US because of the 145% tariff.
That means they're going to dump their products on other markets. Other markets, they're just not going to accept this flood of Chinese products because they cannot see their own manufacturing sectors being decimated. So China is in a really difficult position because it is now more export dependent than it has ever been.
I've heard some people talk about the fact that China's fundamental structure will probably prevent them, in terms of the Chinese Communist Party I'm talking about, will probably prevent the CCP from proposing or agreeing to any deal that the Trump White House might deem acceptable. What do you make of that?
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Chapter 4: How is Xi Jinping's political power being challenged?
Okay. Yeah. You mentioned Mao. Have you seen the, it was basically a blurb that the foreign ministry just put out that featured Chairman Mao talking about how the Chinese essentially will fight to the end and China will not back down. Have you seen that and what do you make of it?
Yeah, that was Thursday from the foreign ministry, which was really quite extraordinary when you think about it, because it was over the top. It was a throwback to the Korean War. It was basically a threat that we'll go out and kill people if you don't come to terms. in our terms. So, I worry about that as a signal. It shows the mentality of the Chinese regime. And I think it shows desperation.
And a desperate communist party is a very dangerous entity. So, yeah, I mean, we can't stop doing what we're doing because we absolutely have to do it. But we got to recognize and we got to be prepared for some pretty bad outcomes.
And what... How would you describe Xi's, you talked about this to some degree already, but how would you describe Xi's hold on power? How tight is that grip?
I don't think it's tight at all. And let me give you an example. In the Communist Party's military, because the People's Liberation Army reports to the Communist Party. It's not a state army. There's been purges upon purges, especially since around July of 2023.
Most recently, the number three or the number two officer, depending on who you talk to, a guy named General He Wei Dong has been disappeared. He hasn't been seen in public since March 11th. And there have been reports that U.S. intelligence believes that he has in fact been taken out. This means, you know, a lot of people say, well, Oh, you know, Xi Jinping just sacked another senior officer.
I don't think that's the case. I think it's more likely that Xi Jinping's enemies at the top of the Chinese military took out a Xi Jinping loyalist, General He.
And the reason is that we have been seeing since July 9th of last year, these articles in PLA Daily, which is the main propaganda organ of the Chinese military, we've been seeing these articles praising collective leadership, quote unquote. That is a direct challenge to Xi Jinping.
And so these articles could not have been maintained without the support of the senior leadership of the PLA, which means the senior leadership of the PLA is in, you might say, open revolt or not open revolt, but it's in revolt against the Chinese leader. Now, if you've got the guys with the guns not happy with you, That means your control over the military is weakened.
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Chapter 5: What are the current developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict?
It has become a workhorse capability. It is the only system they have for reliable, effective operational range strikes, those being strikes beyond 30 kilometers, but short of 70, 75 kilometers. The Europeans do not have a commensurate mature system like the HIMARS to be able to fulfill that very important need.
So, even if the Europeans want to throw a lot of money and try to build up, they need that stuff. And the solution might be that the Europeans just go to the Americans and go to Robert Grumman and go to Lockheed and they're like, hey, we'll pay you at General Dynamics. They're like, hey, we'll pay you to give us the interceptors and the HIMARS ammo.
And then they'll give it to the Koreans that way, which in principle could work and would benefit the US industry too.
So we've got, again, being mindful of your time, we've got the spring offensive as it's being referred to underway by the Russian military. Have you heard anything just in the past handful of days about what they're up to, how they're doing? Are they making progress? Where does that stand?
Right. So it seems like the Russians are in the beginning phases of their spring offensive.
It seems that they are currently trying to take the Russian forces in Northern Ukraine, the ones that were clearing out Kursk, where the Ukrainians were in Kursk and Russia, and they're trying to steamroll it across the international border into Sumy, and possibly into neighboring Northern Kharkiv oblasts in Ukraine. Now, candidly, Mike, I got to tell you, I'm not my...
My forecast is not particularly grim on this operation. The Russian forces that they have up there has not been significantly augmented from what they were operating with in Kursk. It's about ballpark 60 to 70,000 guys, so maybe six, seven divisions or so.
A lot of the same units that have been there for a long time, we've not indicated any redeployments of bringing in fresh troops that those forces that were tired fighting and expelling the Ukrainians from Kursk They're not going to have a lot of gusto and energy to keep going into Sumi.
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Chapter 6: How does Putin's strategy affect the potential for peace?
Chapter 7: What is the future of U.S.-China relations amidst the tariff war?
Most recently, the number three or the number two officer, depending on who you talk to, a guy named General He Wei Dong has been disappeared. He hasn't been seen in public since March 11th. And there have been reports that U.S. intelligence believes that he has in fact been taken out. This means, you know, a lot of people say, well, Oh, you know, Xi Jinping just sacked another senior officer.
I don't think that's the case. I think it's more likely that Xi Jinping's enemies at the top of the Chinese military took out a Xi Jinping loyalist, General He.
And the reason is that we have been seeing since July 9th of last year, these articles in PLA Daily, which is the main propaganda organ of the Chinese military, we've been seeing these articles praising collective leadership, quote unquote. That is a direct challenge to Xi Jinping.
And so these articles could not have been maintained without the support of the senior leadership of the PLA, which means the senior leadership of the PLA is in, you might say, open revolt or not open revolt, but it's in revolt against the Chinese leader. Now, if you've got the guys with the guns not happy with you, That means your control over the military is weakened.
And also, I believe that there's senior civilian party officials who are gunning for Xi Jinping, figuratively, not literally.
What's the primary point of dissatisfaction from the military's perspective with Xi?
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Chapter 8: What potential outcomes can arise from escalating tensions?
Well, Xi Jinping is taking the country off the cliff. The military can see it. I don't think that they're happy about that. The primary point of contention, though, would be that Xi Jinping has been purging people. They've been taking away their livelihoods. The other generals and admirals, they don't like that. And so they don't want this at all.
I think you have a military right now, which is very divided. So it is not the type of military that is actually prepared to go to war, even though they've got some pretty neat weapons. some of them which are better than ours. But the point here is that the military is a political military and now it's very politicized.
Is there a clear or obvious candidate, whether within the military or within the party, that stands to gain from Xi Jinping being pushed aside?
Yeah, everybody, basically. So, you've narrowed it down, Gordon. Yeah. I thought you were going to ask, is there a specific person, which is the reason why I was shaking my head. No. I don't know if there's a specific person, but there are a lot of people who are unhappy. And the reason is, when Xi Jinping became general party secretary in 2012,
The understanding and the norms and the guidelines in the party was that he was only going to get two five-year terms as general secretary of the party. And that means after the 10 years, there would be a whole new generation of leadership. People would get promoted. What Xi Jinping did by taking a third term was he was denying a whole generation of leadership the chances for promotion.
And that means these people are not happy. They may not have the power to challenge Xi Jinping openly, but I think that they're waiting for sea to fall so that they can rise. And that means he's got a lot of enemies within the political system, basically everybody.
Maybe I'm asking the question that really doesn't have an answer, but how does that work then? I mean, if they're waiting for Xi to fall, I mean, how does that, it's palace intrigue, right? But I mean, how does that happen? Is the only entity capable of taking them out the military or can the party act and are they, you know, from your perspective, are they able or willing to?
Yeah. There are no rules in the party anymore. So, anything can happen. So, you know, in arts, you know, we always say, well, you know, in America, you know, the president has a short term because he's got midterms and then he's got four years, he's got to be reelected. And we say, you know, we Americans are short term thinking. But Xi Jinping, because he's jumped the roles,
I mean, he has an election every day. And so, he's got a really short-term thinking. He needs to get by hour by hour, because in that system, anything can happen. You know, if you go back to Mao Zedong, that was sort of supposed to be a collective leadership. Mao got rid of the rules. Mao was supreme, but it also meant there were no rules.
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