ExclusiveUS Plans Tariffs for 60 Countries Over Forced Labor | China in Focus

Welcome to China In Focus, I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story, the Trump administration plans to impose a new round of tariffs on 60 countries over forced labor concerns. Both China and Taiwan are on the list, as well as America's neighboring countries and European allies. Secretary of State Marco Rubio under fire on Capitol Hill defending US support for Taiwan. Lawmakers also press him on Cuba and Iran. NBA star Steph Curry signs a new deal with a major Chinese apparel brand, sparking renewed questions about the NBA's growing ties to China. And from chips to geopolitics, Taiwan sits at the heart of the AI supply chain. At Computex 2026 in Taipei, NVIDIA's Jensen Huang highlights the island's role as the epicenter of the tech ecosystem. Taiwan's rich ecosystem, the richest ecosystem, the world's best supply chain ecosystem. The U.S. is proposing new tariffs on imports from 60 economies, citing what it says is a failure to block goods made with forced labor. The list includes China, Taiwan, the European Union and the U.K. Some U.S. neighbors are also on the list, including Canada and Mexico. Here's more. The Trump administration has proposed placing more duties on imports from 60 economies. It cited failures to curb trade in goods made with forced labor, which it called unreasonable and argued it restricted U.S. commerce. The duties would reach up to 10 percent or 12.5 percent. The proposals by the U.S. Trade Representative's Office, or USTR, is the latest finding from a Section 301 unfair trade practices investigation. The U.S. Trade Representative, Jameson Greer, said the failure to address the importation of goods made with forced labor is unacceptable. He added it meant American workers were forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field. The announcement comes ahead of the July 24th expiration of a 10 percent temporary tariff imposed by the Trump administration in February. The USTR further said it would exempt a number of products from the tariffs. Those included energy, rare earths and certain other metals, beef, coffee, pharmaceuticals, aircraft parts and other selected items. The USTR said it would accept public comments on the proposed tariffs and other remedies through July 6th. The Chinese Communist Party has denied allegations of forced labor, as it has many times before. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Capitol Hill Tuesday defending the Trump administration's America First foreign policy from China and Taiwan to Cuba and Iran. Lawmakers pressed Rubio on some of the biggest foreign policy challenges. Entities Washington correspondent Jack Bradley reports. We remain the world's sole global superpower. From Senate Foreign Relations to the House Appropriations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defending the Trump administration's America First foreign policy. Outside the briefing room, a small group of protesters arrested before Rubio even began testifying. Much of the day focusing on China and its growing threat to Taiwan. I know from our service here together that you agree that China is the greatest national security threat that we face. And one of the key reasons is their repeated threats to take control of Taiwan by force if necessary. In December, the US approved a record $11 billion arms sale to Taiwan. Rubio says Beijing responded with aggression. And it was so big and so noticeable that the Chinese became very aggressive about it and some of the incursions they undertook as a result of it. Democrats are pressing Rubio on President Trump's comments about using a potential $14 billion arms package as a bargaining chip. President Trump has said publicly that arms sales to Taipei are a great negotiating chip with China. When the president says it's a great negotiating chip, what he's really saying is it's because China, as you can imagine, always mentions this. We did approve an arms sales, I think $11 billion. There were a six year period of time under the Obama administration where there were Rubio also slamming China's Belt and Road Initiative, calling it debt trap diplomacy. China and other global powers have intruded in our western hemisphere. If it's loans, they create these debt traps. These countries are trying to develop their telecommunications system. They're trying to build roads. There's a track record of not completing these projects. There's a track record of flooding the country with Chinese workers that come and do the work. On Cuba, Rubio made clear that there will be no softening. Virtually every left-wing, radical, violent terrorist group in the western hemisphere has at some point relied on support from Cuba. Cuba continues to host a pretty substantial collection of intelligence sites on behalf of the Chinese and the Russians. Rubio describes Cuba as a failed state, largely controlled by the military conglomerate, Gaiza, making meaningful reform highly unlikely. Can they possibly reform, given the people who are currently in charge, both of Gaiza and of their government? And I think the answer is they can't. I really don't believe this system is capable of reform unless new people take over. On Iran, Rubio says that Tehran will not get sanctions relief just for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Any relief, he says, first requires major nuclear concessions. Iran is being sanctioned because they enrich uranium. Throughout the hearings, Rubio stressed one core principle. American foreign aid should advance U.S. interests, not create dependency. For NTD News, Washington, I'm Jack Bradley. Steph Curry is heading in a new direction off the court. The NBA superstar has signed a long-term deal with a major Chinese sportswear company. The move is drawing criticism over the league's growing ties to China. That's due to the NBA's outspoken stance on human rights issues in America, but far less frequent criticism of the Chinese regime's human rights abuses. Steph Curry ended his sneaker-free agency on Monday with a reported 10-year partnership with Chinese athletic brand Li Ning. Notably, the Chinese brand has a controversial human rights record. It has been accused of using forced labor in its supply chain and has been investigated by U.S. Customs. The deal comes after Curry's 13-year run with Under Armour ended last year. The agreement is the latest example of NBA stars partnering with Chinese brands. Former NBA player and human rights activist Enes Kanter Freedom says those relationships deserve more scrutiny. He joined NTD's Steve Lance in-studio to discuss. I believe right now there are close to 30 NBA players are, you know, signed some kind of like a, you know, deal with the Chinese shoe deal. But you know, it actually makes me sad because Stephen Curry, obviously one of the faces of the league, right, he has millions of followers around the world. And I remember back in, you know, 2020, all these NBA players were standing up against all the problems that are happening in America. So many problems are happening in America. I see the hypocrisy, you know, throughout the years, all these players are now taking, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars by these shoe companies that are linked with the slave labor. Someone has to call them out. For some critics, Curry's move underscores what they see as a contradiction within the NBA. They say the league has been outspoken on social issues at home, but much less vocal about China's human rights abuses. These players who are getting millions of dollars to lecture us about the problems that are happening in America, but when it comes to China, everybody's silent. When you criticize America, it doesn't affect their money or business or pocket. That's why they do not care about it. With an estimated 450 million NBA fans in China, it remains one of the league's most As more players partner with Chinese companies, those financial ties continue to deepen. Any pro-Western leader of a Pacific Island nation could tip the country's balance between China and the U.S. The Solomon Islands' new prime minister, Matthew Wales, says his government will review a secretive security treaty signed with China four years ago. The agreement raised concerns among the United States and its allies in the region. Western countries fear the agreement with China could allow Beijing to establish a base in the South Pacific. Wales said he only recently received the pact after changes in key government positions. He said the agreement will be reviewed alongside other security arrangements with partner countries. Wales met Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during his first overseas visit in office. Both leaders agreed to strengthen bilateral ties. They also said they will discuss a broader strategic treaty covering security and economic cooperation. Computex 2026 is now underway in Taipei, running from June 2nd through June 5th. This year's event brings together some of the most influential leaders in the tech industry, including CEOs from Nvidia, Qualcomm, Marvell and Intel. Their presence highlights Taiwan's role as a central hub in the growing artificial intelligence supply chain. Nvidia is the dominant force at Taiwan's 2026 Computex show. CEO Jensen Huang emphasizes the island's crucial role in the global tech and AI ecosystem. Taiwan is incredible at manufacturing, especially technology manufacturing. This is the epicenter of the ecosystem. Taiwan's strengths span the entire AI ecosystem. That includes advanced semiconductor manufacturing and chip packaging, as well as server assembly, infrastructure deployment and next-generation AI applications. Taiwan is such an incredible strategic partner for the United States because Taiwan is investing in the ecosystem, the manufacturing in the United States. At the heart of this ecosystem is Taiwan's strategic position as home to the world's largest contract chipmaker. That makes the island an indispensable hub in the global race to power artificial intelligence. Taiwan's leading chipmaker, TSMC, recently announced a $165 billion investment in the United States, the largest single foreign direct investment in American history. Last week, Jensen Huang revealed plans to invest roughly $150 billion annually in Taiwan. And on Tuesday, Taiwan President Lai Ching-de emphasized that peace is the foundation for the prosperous development of the AI industry. The government will firmly safeguard peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and is committed to maintaining the status quo. This is our unchanging national policy and also Taiwan's most responsible pledge to the global supply chain. According to the organizer, more than 6,000 exhibitors are taking part in this year's Computex, the largest ever in the show's history. Top topics include AI agents, token-based economies and the evolution of AI from the cloud to end-users. These trends highlight the critical importance of ensuring a secure and stable AI supply chain. The Taiwan military's top weapons development institute showed off three robot patrol dogs on Tuesday. They say these robot dogs could one day be used on Taiwan's islands in the disputed South China Sea. Taiwan has been modernizing its armed forces as Beijing ramps up pressure on the self-governed island, which China claims as its own territory. The military-owned National Changshan Institute of Science and Technology showed off three versions of the dogs in Taipei. They're built on a platform made by U.S. military supplier Ghost Robotics, a major manufacturer of the four-legged machines. The institute says it has added its own tech, producing versions for reconnaissance, surveillance and a firepower dog with a gun on its back. Jen-Kuo Kuang is a deputy head of the institute's Missile and Rocket Systems Research Division. The Marines believe that on beaches and the coastline, including for the Coast Guard in Dongsha and Nansha for patrols and inspection, there is a pressing need. As for the Army, they have a need to help with patrols in the military camp. Therefore, we will organize based on the needs and the location of camps to fulfill the requirements of different assignments. From there onwards, we will gradually expand to different locations. Nansha and Dongsha refer to the Spratly and Pratas Islands in the South China Sea, respectively. China claims Taiwan and almost the entire South China Sea. Taiwan's government rejects that claim. Taiwan claims one major island in the Spratlys called Ituaba and controls all of the Pratas, which sit at a strategic location at the top end of the South China Sea. Last month, Chinese and Taiwanese Coast Guard ships were engaged in a tense two-day standoff near the Pratas. Taiwan has also reported a growing number of Chinese Coast Guard patrols and even drones near the Pratas in recent months. Coming up, hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens have been quietly severing ties with Beijing. That includes quitting the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations. So what's driving those decisions? And why is it so important to remember the events of June 4th, 1989? The president of victims of communism joins us next. The people of China, just like the people of Vietnam or the people of Cuba or the people of Venezuela or the people of Eritrea, they are the victims of communism. More on that after the break here on China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Now we turn to a movement quietly sweeping across China. Over 460 million Chinese people have quit the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations. Many of them posted statements under pseudonyms explaining why they quit the party. Here are a few highlights. A Chinese student studying in Europe wrote in a statement that he quit the party, saying the CCP uses intimidation tactics to censor dissent, and he refuses to be part of it. After publicizing articles criticizing CCP policies, he says Chinese authorities harassed and threatened his family members in China. The student said he can't accept a system that uses family bonds as leverage to suppress opposing views. Another Chinese citizen working in Shanghai wrote in a statement that exposure to uncensored information overseas changed his thinking. He said the CCP thrives on violence and lies and severely restricts freedom and human rights. He added that this goes against democracy and freedom, values he holds dear. He said he quit the party because he couldn't go along with it. June 4th marks 37 years since the Chinese regime turned its army on unarmed students in Tiananmen Square. Those calls for democracy and the ensuring bloodshed still haunts the regime to this day. Despite the CCP's efforts to wipe that event from history, the free world remembers. Joining us now on why it's so important to commemorate that event is Eric Patterson, president and CEO of Victims of Communism. Eric Patterson, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you back on the show. It's my pleasure. Thank you, Tiffany. I know that every year Victims of Communism holds a candlelight vigil to commemorate the events of June 4th or the Tiananmen Square massacre that took place in Beijing back in the day. Why is it important now more than ever to remember what took place that day? We host this annual event at the beautiful Goddess of Liberty statue that's in Washington, D.C. that the foundation funded and put up in 2007. And we hold this annual event first, it's important to commemorate the incredible heroism of students, not just in Beijing at Tiananmen Square, but in a dozen cities around China who were leading a call for change, a call for human rights, a call for democracy. And to remember that they were slaughtered or imprisoned in the streets, thousands of them by most estimates. The other reason that we remember this is not just as a historical token, but because that same regime behaving in a similar fashion is there today. So whether it's the repression in Hong Kong, the repression in Tibet, the repression in Xinjiang, the repression of religious minorities, this powerful communist regime is behaving the same way today. So this is a living memory, not just of the past, but of today's crimes and atrocities. And I think during the pandemic era, for many, they found out that what happens in China doesn't stay in China. It could impact us here in our daily lives. But why is it important for Americans to also know what happened that day on June 4th? The reason that it's important that we commemorate this today and here in America for Americans to commemorate this is not just because it's a historical moment that meant so many to those families and to those lives, but because at the center of the Tiananmen movement, we saw students create a 30-foot tall version of the Statue of Liberty. In other words, they were pointing to these universal freedoms that are expressed in the Declaration of Independence and things about freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to assemble, the right to have their voices heard in terms of political representation. And so today, this summer, as we celebrate America 250, when we reflect on that, we recognize and we should be recommitting ourselves to this idea of America. This set of ideas are for everyone, everywhere. I also want to highlight how I think the Victims of Communism Foundation provides a lot of educational value, because I feel right now when many people want to learn more about China, perhaps in the public school system, there's been a lot of reporting about the Confucius Institute, so much so that they've actually renamed themselves. But it's still an avenue of Beijing's influence in our schooling system, where when you want to learn the truth, suddenly you're not allowed to learn about Tiananmen, Tibet, Taiwan, the three Ts that Beijing doesn't like covered. Talk to us about some of the pitfalls of when people do want to learn the truth, even in our education system here. Well, what you said is right on the money. I was recently at an academic conference here in the United States with a young Chinese scholar, and he disputed that Tiananmen had ever happened, other than as a small-scale student protest. History has been totally whitewashed, in a sense, for him as a young researcher at a major Chinese university. And if it's happening there, so much more we find it happening here in the United States, a charm offensive by Beijing in many, many ways, whether it's investing heavily in higher education with Confucius Institutes, or research, or grants, or the setting up of journals or professorships, but also a softening, whether it's on Wikipedia, or it's in curricula, or free materials, or the China Daily newspaper that's all over Washington, DC. There's a very intelligent charm offensive to say, you know what, China's really not all that bad. Those depredations, those crimes, they were things of the far, far past, and they're probably exaggerated. China is open for business. They're a historic friend. These things are really not that big of a deal. There are a lot of cases of, whether that was Aileen Wong, the mayor who just pleaded guilty from Arcadia, California, a bunch of students who were caught either at sensitive military sites, or literally stealing technology, or trying to import fungi and different items, prohibited items. There have been calls that this is racism against the Chinese people. Talk to us about how do we differentiate between the Chinese people, who are the biggest victims of communist China, versus the Communist Party of China. You've hit it right on the head that the people of China, just like the people of Vietnam, or the people of Cuba, or the people of Venezuela, or the people of Eritrea, they are the victims of communism. There may be some cases where their standard of living and things have raised, but we're talking about a century of communism, murdering men, women, and children, repressing them in every possible way. Much of the Chinese public is in thrall still to the CCP. As Americans, we're not against them, we're actually for them when we're calling out the human rights violations, because we wish for a better way for all of China. As you said, there are a lot of things to be vigilant here at home in terms of misinformation, in terms of social media, and the vilifying of the United States on TikTok by Chinese and Russian bots and things, and the elevation of those societies. So this is a problem that we face every day. I want to highlight some of the other areas of influence, quite deadly ones, perhaps. There's been a lot of reporting of toys that you can buy on, say, Timuxin and all these other sites that have ridiculous levels of lead, which are quite poisonous. And of course, I know you've done a lot of reporting about the labubus, the viral little dolls, which most are made with forced labor in Xinjiang. Talk to us about some of the concerns here that, you know, perhaps parents should be aware of. Yes. Two of the most recent ones come to mind. One, of course, is the labubu dolls that we released a set of reports with our campaign for Uyghurs in The New York Times just about three weeks ago, that 16 of the dolls tested out of 20 had cotton that was from the fields that are worked by slave labor in western China. Not one doll, not two doll, it was a mistake, but this is an area where it's been proven 90% of China's cotton comes from and 20% of the global supply of cotton, and it's that area that is supplying these labubu dolls. And so parents looking at something that looks charming and innocent, we're trying to awaken them to making decisions for their kids in terms of the clothes that they wear, the shoes that they wear on their feet, the toys that they choose, don't buy things from these Chinese companies, these bombers that aid the slave trade or slave labor there in China. Well, Eric Patterson, as always, thank you so much for your time. Tiffany, you're very welcome. Thank you. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation will host a candlelight vigil commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre on Thursday, June 4th, from 8 to 9 p.m. Eastern Time in Washington, D.C. The vigil will take place at the corner of New Jersey and Massachusetts Avenues Northwest near the Victims of Communism Memorial. That's all for today's China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. If you have any feedback on the show or have something you'd like to see us cover, send us an email at ChinaInFocus at NTD.com. We'd love to hear from you. For on-the-clock original news coverage, visit us at NTD.com or download our NTD app. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.