The US is going to increase tariffs on things that come from China
The White House said China’s unfair trade practices didn’t meet US President Joe Biden’s goals for increasing exports or stopping theft of intellectual property. “The tariffs…weren’t increased,” a White House official said, adding the administration has downplayed the risk of retaliatory tariffs from China. Biden had increased tariffs on certain technologies including batteries and semiconductors in a move to reduce COVID-19 emissions.
Biden is trying to buy time with the new tariffs
US President Joe Biden has announced new tariffs on $18 billion in goods imports from China, including electric vehicles and semiconductors, amid a trade dispute. The White House has said the tariffs were unlikely to cause antagonised with China. The administration believes that the new tariffs are necessary to make sure America’s workers and companies are protected from unfairly traded products.
Tech executives are released by Republicans
US Republicans, during a hearing on Wednesday, released thousands of emails and other non-public documents which they claim show that the White House “coerced” companies to suppress free speech. Democrats claimed that the Republicans were holding the hearing to “influence” the Supreme Court opinion in Murthy v. Murthy case, a case that’s still pending at the Supreme Court.
Biden would not ban TikTok
After US lawmakers proposed a law to stop TikTok from selling in the country, a White House official said, “Obviously, this is about our national security.” The bill would require TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell the app because of national security concerns about its use and store of data or face a ban.
Biden wants US government programs to be tested to make sure they don’t harm citizens
The White House Office of Management and Budget has released its draft rules to increase government use of Artificial Intelligence. The draft rules would require testing and evaluation of algorithms to be done by people with no direct involvement in a system’s development and encourage external “red teaming” tests of generative AI models.
Tech fears are showing up on the picket lines
An economist at the University of Cambridge, Partha Dasgupta, has said that a government’s report on the value of natural resources should be viewed with an open mind. Dasgupta made the case for shifting how natural resources are valued in a report commissioned by the British government. Last month, the White House released a draft proposal on ecosystem services in government.