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The Club PUBlication 06/23/2025

6/23/2025

China’s exports again change economies and geopolitics
Story by ALEXANDRA STEVENSON Photos by GILLES SABRIÉ •
The New York Times

Two decades ago, China shocked the United States with its ability to make and ship things fast and inexpensively on a scale never before seen. The resulting surge of exports reshaped America's economy and its politics.

Today, a new China shock is cascading across the globe from Indonesia to Germany to Brazil.

As President Donald Trump's tariffs start to shut China out of the United States, its biggest market, Chinese factories are sending their toys, cars and shoes to other countries at a pace that is reshaping economies and geopolitics.

This year, China's trade surplus with the world is nearly $500 billion — a more than 40% increase from the same period last year.
As the world's two superpowers duke it out over trade, the rest of the world is now bracing for an even bigger China shock.

"China has loads of things that it needs to export, and whether or not the U.S. puts tariffs on China, it's pretty much impossible to stop the shifts in flows," said Leah Fahy, a China economist at Capital Economics.

The flood of exports from China is the consequence of government policy and a slowing domestic economy. To soften the blow of a real estate crisis that reduced the wealth of millions of households, Beijing has for several years been shoveling money into its manufacturing sectors, which are making far more things than there is demand for at home.

China's global market share for all categories of goods has risen sharply, according to an analysis by Fahy. This will continue despite the tariffs because Beijing is unlikely to change the course of its export-oriented policies.

By diverting the flow of its stuff to Southeast Asia, Latin America and Europe, China has already eased the economic effect of a plunge in demand from the United States. But it puts China in potential conflict with trading partners that are also facing pressure from Washington.

Trump is threatening steep tariffs for the same countries that are being inundated with more Chinese goods, such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia. Those tariffs have, for now, been put on pause for negotiations. Some countries have benefited from an increase in investment by foreign companies that are trying to shift production from China as quickly as possible.

Others have also been able to reship some Chinese goods by exporting them to the United States. But if they cannot negotiate the tariffs much lower, homegrown companies in countries facing severe U.S. tariffs in Southeast Asia and elsewhere could be crushed by competition from Chinese companies.

As much as Trump has disrupted trade with tariff levels not seen in a century, the drastic shift in China's exports was building long before he took office in January.

China's property crisis --
a glut of housing, plunging prices and widespread bankruptcies — began to reverberate through the economy in 2021. China's policymakers wasted no time diverting cheap loans away from developers to exporters and manufacturers, a move that eventually offset the collapse in construction, which at its peak contributed to onethird of economic growth.

For Beijing, it was a triedand-tested move: Throw money at the problem.
"They often overinvest to get the scale first, and then the process is aided by government policies," said Tommy Wu, an economist at Commerzbank. "That contributes to why we have this problem today."
China had already embarked on a domestic industrial policy in 2015, known as Made in China 2025, to make higherskilled, more valuable goods like sophisticated computer chips and electric vehicles. That initiative led the United States and Europe to raise tariffs on electric cars, solar panels and other high-technology products.

But China's drive to boost manufacturing since the property market collapse has gone much further. Even while making more advanced products, Chinese manufacturers doubled down on making tchotchkes, the kinds of cheaper things that China excelled at making two decades ago. China rewrote the playbook, confounding economists.

"China is not developing the way economic theory suggests, and now we are faced with a new model," said Priyanka Kishore, an economist in Singapore, referring to the traditional trajectory of economies that move away from low-end manufacturing as they become more mature and developed.

"This is a challenge because it exacerbates pressures on the rest of the world," Kishore said. With tariffs starting to realign trade flows and supply chains, the economic effect is beginning to show.

In Germany, where shipments of Chinese goods last month rose 20% from a year earlier, companies have expressed concerns to Wu, the economist from Commerzbank. Carmakers feel it most acutely.

China has made 45% more electric vehicles this year, even as Chinese companies are engaged in a vicious price war at home because of flagging consumer appetite. Exports of electric vehicles have soared 64.6% this year, according to the Chinese Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Countries that have borne the brunt of the jump in Chinese imports have also seen sharp declines in their own manufacturing, leading to job losses and bankruptcies.

In Indonesia, garment factories are closing, citing their inability to compete with cheaper clothes from China. Some 250,000 people lost their jobs in the garment industry in 2023 and 2024, said Redma Gita Wirawasta, chair of the Indonesian Filament Yarn and Fiber Producers Association. Thai auto parts manufacturers have shut down because of Chinese electric vehicles. Brazilian carmakers have called on the government to initiate an antidumping probe into Chinese cars sold in the country.

For most countries, there are two options. The first is to do nothing and watch manufacturing get hollowed out, said Sonal Varma, the chief economist for Asia, with the exception of Japan, at Nomura, the Japanese bank.

The other option is to raise tariffs and use other protectionist measures in specific sectors, just as the United States has done with China. This risks the ire of China, which uses trade and investment as leverage in its diplomatic overtures, or the United States.

"Supply chains are getting bifurcated along geopolitical lines," Varma said. "It has become a lot more difficult for countries to decide: Who do you align with?"

June 16th, 2025

6/16/2025

Uncertainty over vaccines grows
Critics appointed by RFK Jr. could affect availability and cost.
By LENA H. SUN and LAUREN WEBER • The Washington Post

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s overhaul of a federal immunization panel has created uncertainty around how widely vaccines will be available this fall and if they'll be free, according to six current and former health officials.

After Kennedy purged the influential committee that recommends vaccines and appointed his own picks, staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who provide the panel with research have now been pushed aside, according to the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

It's unclear what direction this new group, which includes vaccine critics, will go, and whether they'll be able to give the stamp of approval needed for Americans to receive free vaccines against coronavirus and other pathogens in time for the fall vaccine season.

"If we have a system that has been dismantled — one that allowed for open, evidencebased decisionmaking and that supported transparent and clear dialogue about vaccines — and then we replace it with a process that's driven largely by one person's beliefs, that creates a system that cannot be trusted," Helen Chu, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine who was ousted from the vaccine committee, said in a news conference Thursday.

HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said the previous members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices had become a rubber stamp for any vaccine.

"This group will go where the science takes them," Nixon said in a statement, noting half of the eight new appointments have previously served on federal health boards. "Secretary Kennedy has replaced vaccine groupthink with a diversity of viewpoints on ACIP."

The new group could vote on recommendations for coronavirus, influenza, meningococcal and HPV as well as RSV vaccines for adults, pregnant women and infants, according to the Federal Register notice posted this week.

The committee may also discuss additional vaccines, including for Lyme disease and anthrax.

The committee's recommendations, if approved by the CDC director, determine who can receive the vaccines and which ones insurers will cover.

While the CDC director position has been vacant, Kennedy has signed off on recommendations.

The CDC official overseeing the operations of the panel and the staff who gather and present vaccine data was removed from her role this week, according to two current and one former federal health official.
Melinda Wharton, who has nearly 20 years' experience in vaccines and immunization at the agency, has been replaced by the director of scheduling and advance in the immediate office of the CDC director.

"The biggest fear is that science and data won't be the primary drivers of decisions," said one federal health official.

"The largest public health concern is that this move will end up broadly restricting vaccine access."

The Club PUBlication 06/09/2025

6/9/2025

China steps into gap for scientists
“The United States is shooting itself in the foot,” a researcher says.
By VIVIAN WANG The New York Times

HANGZHOU, CHINA - China was already scoring wins in its rivalry with the United States for scientific talent. It had drawn some of the world's best researchers to its campuses, people decorated with Nobel Prizes, MacArthur "Genius" grants and seemingly every other academic laurel on offer.

Now the Trump administration's policies might soon bolster China's efforts.

Under President Donald Trump, the United States is slashing the research funding that helped establish its reputation as the global leader in science and technology. The president is also attacking the country's premier universities, and trying to limit the enrollment of international students.

Scientists from China are under particular pressure, as U.S. officials have said that they may pose a national security threat by funneling valuable knowledge to China. Chineseborn scientists have been investigated or even arrested. Last week, the Trump administration said it would work to "aggressively revoke" the visas of Chinese students in "critical fields."

As a result, many scholars are looking elsewhere. And Chinese institutions have been quick to try to capitalize.

Universities in Hong Kong and Xi'an said they would offer streamlined admission to transfer students from Harvard University.

An ad from a group with links to the Chinese Academy of Sciences welcomed "talents who have been dismissed by the U.S. NIH," or National Institutes of Health.

"The United States is shooting itself in the foot," said Zhang Xiaoming, an anatomy expert who last year left the Baylor College of Medicine, in Texas, to lead the medical education program at Westlake University, in the tech hub of Hangzhou.

"Since I went to the United States more than 30 years ago, so much of its research has been supported by foreigners, including many Chinese," said Zhang, who emphasized that he was speaking for himself, not his employer. "Without foreigners, at least in the field of scientific research, they can't go on."

On its own, China had become more attractive to scientists in recent years because of the huge investments the country has made in research.

Westlake is a prime example.
Established in 2018 by several high-profile scientists who had returned to China from the West, Westlake's campus exudes technological advancement.

A spaceshiplike tower looms over rows of research laboratories. Computing centers and animal testing facilities cluster around a central lawn, in a shape designed to evoke a biological cell.

In its main academic building, portraits of dozens of professors are on display — all of whom were recruited from overseas.

Recruitment notices advertise high compensation, in line with those at top foreign universities.

Between 2010 and 2021, nearly 12,500 scientists of Chinese descent left the United States for China, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

More than half of them left between 2017 and 2021.

Multiple Chinese-born scientists — both those who had returned to China, and those still in the U.S. — emphasized that they did not want to get entangled in politics. They were just trying to do good work.

The simple fact was, many agreed, that it was increasingly easier to do so in China.

"It's hard to survive in America. And China is developing so fast," said Fu Tianfan, 32, an artificial intelligence researcher who left Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in December to join Nanjing University.

"Whether it was the best choice," he said, "it may take some time to say."

The Club PUBlication 06/02/2025

6/2/2025

As scams hit $17B, nonprofit fights fraud against seniors
By MICHELLE SINGLETARY The Washington Post

Our interactions — through email, computers, mobile devices and social media — face relentless daily attacks.

Text messages can't be trusted. Every email should be seen as suspect. Answering the telephone puts you at risk of being defrauded.
Cybercriminals and scammers have infiltrated these spaces with alarming ease and they will keep siphoning victims' money without a stronger, unified response.

In its latest Internet Crime Complaint Center r eport, the FBI says criminals stole a record $16.6 billion in scams and cybercrime in 2024. That's a jump of 33% from a year earlier.

This year's report marks the 25th anniversary of the FBI's analysis of these crimes, a milestone that underscores a disturbing trend. Initially, the bureau got about 2,000 complaints every month. In the last five years, the number has exploded to an average 2,000 complaints every day.

Separately, complaints to the Federal Trade Commission, which also tracks fraud, echo this grim reality. The FTC reported that consumers lost more than $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024, a 25% increase over the prior year. By the way, the FTC said that jump isn't the result of more reported complaints but a double-digit increase in the percentage of people who reported losing money.

These staggering figures don't fully convey the depth of the problem in the United States — because many people who are scammed don't report the crime or their losses.

That's why the FTC also adjusts for underreporting. In a report last year, the agency included an estimate that the overall loss in 2023 was in fact $158.3 billion. This total includes $61.5 billion stolen from seniors. (While younger adults report experiencing fraud more frequently, older adults tend to suffer greater financial losses.)

The case of a Maryland woman who lost nearly $600,000 in retirement funds to a sophisticated government impersonation scam, which I explored in a seven-part series last year, illustrated a fundamental weakness in our approach to financial fraud: We largely expect individuals to defend themselves, an approach that often leads to victim-blaming and further discourages reporting.

To combat this growing crisis, we need an aggressive strategy that moves beyond mere prevention through consumer education and prioritizes a coordinated nationwide initiative — encompassing both private and public entities to actively target and dismantle criminal operations.

This is the mission of the newly launched National Elder Fraud Coordination Center.

Founded and directed by former FBI agent Brady Finta, the nonprofit's initial partners include AARP, Google, Walmart and Amazon.

Finta said the center will use data from retailers, financial institutions and other businesses to create a unified front in elder fraud investigation across the United States.

This collaboration would make it easier to spot trends and connect individual cases stemming from the same criminal network, which are often based overseas. The center would then refer cases to federal authorities for investigation and prosecution.

"The new center will help law enforcement fill a significant gap in their abilities to address this type of fraud," said Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention programs at AARP Fraud Watch Network.

Victims often express frustration after filing reports with agencies like the FBI or FTC and receiving no further communication. However, Stokes believes that connecting more cases could lead to better interventions. If more cases can be linked together, there's a better chance of stopping the scammers and disrupting the lucrative fraud business model," Stokes said.

She emphasizes the larger organized nature of these crime networks.
"We know that so much of what is happening in this country, where fraud is concerned, is coming from transnational crime gangs," she said.

Just as importantly, this new initiative may encourage more victims to report fraud. It represents an updated approach to prevention, driven by an understanding that current methods are insufficient. It's also driven by Finta's personal experience, which highlighted the limitations of consumer education.

As the former supervisory special agent and founder of the San Diego Elder Justice Task Force, he witnessed his own mother fall victim to a tech support scam — even though he had frequently discussed fraud risk with her.

Janet Finta, 80, said that about a year ago she purchased a new Apple computer. A problem arose, so she searched online for help. The first entry on her internet search led to an official-looking site that ended with a call to a con artist impersonating a customer representative from Apple.

"I thought he was being very helpful," Finta said . "He was so nice."

The impersonator kept her on the phone for more than an hour, eventually steering her to click on links to give him access to her financial accounts, which she later had to close.

"It's an emotional roller coaster," she said. "It takes your joy away."

Even knowing he could help, Finta said his mother was reluctant to share what had happened or file a complaint.

"My own mother told me, after she tried to hide the fact that she was a victim, 'Well, nobody was going to do anything anyway, so why even complain?' " he said. "But people have to come forward, or else we're never going to get our hands wrapped around this."
"The new center will help law enforcement fill a significant gap in their abilities to address this type of fraud."

Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention programs at AARP Fraud Watch Network