POLITICS: We Need to Talk About China. Plus. . . – USSA News

It’s Tuesday, August 5. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: The Teamsters president’s plan to unionize Amazon. How the campaign to recall LA mayor Karen Bass collapsed under its own MAGA baggage. And more.

But first: Big trouble in little Taiwan.

China is a problem. There was a time, of course, when we in the West looked at the rise of Chinese capitalism with approval, as millions of its citizens escaped poverty and the country became the locus of globalization. But those days are long gone. Today, the U.S. and much of the rest of the West understands that China poses a serious threat not only economically, since it controls so many products we depend on, but also militarily.

For example, China is reducing exports of rare earth minerals used in everything from bullets to fighter jets, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. While some U.S. manufacturers have attempted to find alternative sources, some elements are so rare that they cannot be viably procured in the West.

Today, we take a close look at several aspects of the China problem.

Our lead essay—one worth printing, and reading more than once—is adapted from a speech Palmer Luckey gave yesterday to students at National Taiwan University. Luckey began his career as so many do in Silicon Valley: making cool products for consumers—in his case, the Oculus virtual reality headset.

But at the age of 24, Luckey had a revelation: the U.S. was in trouble, and help was most definitely not on the way. So he started Anduril Industries, and dedicated himself—and his company—to building advanced technology for the Defense Department and our allies. His message to the NTU students was a sobering one: Given Xi Jinping’s clear desire to take over Taiwan—by force if necessary—Taiwan must follow Ukraine’s lead and “adopt an arsenal equipped for real, high-tech deterrence.” Speaking directly to the students, Luckey added, “This moment demands bold individual choice: to put your extraordinary talents to work in defense of your nation.”

Our second piece, by our friends at Doomberg, offers a chilling example of one Chinese effort to undermine the U.S.—by funding climate activists who fight the fossil fuel industry. All the while, Doomberg writes, “China has simultaneously indulged in coal consumption—by far the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive hydrocarbon—at a staggering scale, and now consumes 56 percent of world output.” Among other advantages, this has allowed China to develop the largest, and arguably most technologically advanced, power grid on the planet.

Our third piece, by Richard Vigilante, offers a contrarian take on the conventional view that the U.S. must keep its most advanced technologies away from the Chinese. He argues instead that there are times when our fears about the China threat overtake our common sense, causing us to shoot ourselves in the foot. Case in point: the ban on sales of semiconductors and other technologies to Chinese companies. Prior to the ban, he writes, “the Chinese not only bought tens of billions worth of U.S. exports but—along with the rest of the world—adopted American-developed industrial standards, a huge advantage to American suppliers.” But the ban has caused China to undertake an all-out national effort to build technology that is every bit as good as ours. And guess what? They’re succeeding.

—Joe Nocera

Sean O’Brien: Why Unions Went for Trump

For a century, labor unions were undeniably Democratic. But last year, labor’s shift toward the GOP was palpable when Teamsters president Sean O’Brien—a lifelong Democrat representing 1.3 million union workers—spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention. On this episode of Honestly, O’Brien pulls no punches discussing how he plans to unionize Amazon workers, Trump’s pro-labor pandering, and whether or not Democrats can win back union support.

• Rep. Nancy Mace announced her bid for South Carolina governor yesterday in what is shaping up to be a crowded race next year. Mace, a Republican, hopes to be a “super MAGA governor,” she said in an interview Sunday. “It’ll be Trump in high heels.”

• Texas governor Greg Abbott is threatening to remove dozens of Democratic state lawmakers from office after they fled the state in a bid to impede the adoption of the state’s new congressional district map. The new map would add five GOP-leaning congressional seats to the Lone Star State before the 2026 midterms.

• More than a dozen house Democrats have signed a letter urging Trump to recognize a Palestinian state. Leading the charge is California Rep. Ro Khanna, who noted in a statement that more than 147 countries have recognized a Palestinian state. “We cannot be isolated from the rest of the free world,” he said.

• American automakers are anticipating higher profits amid Trump’s reversal of Biden-era environmental regulations, including penalties for not making enough electric cars. “To build what customers really want is going to be a tailwind for us,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told Axios, predicting what he called a “multibillion-dollar opportunity” in the wake of Trump’s deregulation.

• Tesla’s board awarded CEO Elon Musk $23.7 billion in stock in an effort to keep the world’s richest man focused on helming the electric vehicle company. A securities filing reviewed by The Wall Street Journal characterized the package as a “first step, good faith payment” to retain Musk’s engagement as CEO.

• Consumers are spending less amid rising anxiety over economic uncertainty, according to federal data released last week and new reporting from The Wall Street Journal. Americans now spend nearly four hours a day thinking about money, one recent survey found.

• Elite U.S. universities have lined up to broker deals with the Trump administration to unfreeze federal funding. Cornell and Northwestern are reportedly close to an agreement, while Brown, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania announced settlements over the past month. Harvard is still holding out.

• Trump threatened a “substantial” tariff hike on India over its purchase of Russian oil as Trump’s August 8 Ukraine war ceasefire deadline looms. “They don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine,” Trump said of India’s government in a post on Truth Social. India’s foreign ministry called the move “unjustified and unreasonable,” adding that “it is revealing that the very nations criticizing India are themselves indulging in trade with Russia.”

• American Eagle’s stock price jumped 23 percent yesterday after Trump praised Sydney Sweeney’s denim ad. “Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “The tide has seriously turned—Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”