Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, on April 7, 2025. Photo: AFP
Senior White House officials are making shocking remarks linking China to recent US market plunge — even targeting Chinese AI firm DeepSeek — as backlash mounts over US economic policies, including sweeping "reciprocal" tariff. Some comments have shocked even American media and netizens.
A Chinese expert told the Global Times on Monday that, "such irrational accusations are so absurd that even the American public is appalled."
The US news website BuzzFeed published a report titled "People are calling out JD Vance for his offensive comment about the US borrowing money from 'Chinese peasants,' and it's shocking even for him," stating that in a now-viral clip, Vance discussed the Trump administration's foreign trade policies with China by directly insulting Chinese people.
The report commented: "If there's one thing Vice President JD Vance is going to do, it's embarrass Americans everywhere."
The report said that people are appalled at Vance's statement. "genuinely how does a vice president get away with calling Chinese people 'peasants' in 2025," one person wrote.
Others pointed out the advantages that China has over the US, said the report. "'Chinese peasants' are enjoying the world's largest high-speed rail network, the world's most advanced EV cars, they live in one of the safest countries in the world with little crime, they have more affordable and better healthcare, cheaper groceries and some of the most advanced and futuristic cities on the planet. But yet this guy is mad because China should have just stayed poor and been a manufacturing country for the benefit of America. I wish JD Vance would go to China so he could learn the truth."
In addition to JD Vance, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also claimed that the stock market plunge has more to do with the emergence of China's DeepSeek artificial intelligence tool this year than with President Donald Trump's policies, according to Reuters on Friday.
"For everyone who thinks these market declines are all based on the President's economic policies, I can tell you that this market decline started with the Chinese AI announcement of DeepSeek," Bessent told conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, said Reuters.
"If I were to analyze in my old hat, and this is the only time I'm going to talk about it ... what's happening with the market I'd say it's more a Mag 7 problem, not a MAGA problem," said Bessent, who ran a hedge fund until being tapped as Treasury secretary, Reuters reported.
As Reuters reported, "Mag 7" refers to the shares of the so-called Magnificent 7 - a group of seven high-performing tech stocks that had helped drive the market higher before its recent selloff. MAGA refers to Trump's "Make America Great Again" political slogan.
Coincidentally, in a New York Times opinion piece titled "I Just Saw the Future. It Was Not in America," Thomas L Friedman observed that "Trump's 'Liberation Day' strategy is to double down on tariffs while gutting our national scientific institutions and work force that spur US innovation. China's liberation strategy is to open more research campuses and double down on AI-driven innovation to be permanently liberated from Trump's tariffs."
According to Reuters, US stocks have tumbled by around 10% percent in the two days since Trump announced a new global tariff regime that was more aggressive than analysts and investors had been anticipating. It is a drop that market analysts and large investors themselves have laid at the feet of Trump's aggressive push on tariffs, which most economists and the head of the Federal Reserve believe risk stoking inflation and damaging economic growth.
Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told the Global Times that a key objective of the current US approach toward China is to suppress it under various pretexts. Remarks by figures such as JD Vance and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are, in essence, efforts to shift the blame for America's own economic troubles.
In response to a media inquiry regarding the US' recently announced tariff hikes on all trading partners, covering over 180 countries and regions in the world, including some vulnerable economies designated as the least developed countries by the UN, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on Monday that the US hegemonic move in the name of "reciprocity" serves its selfish interests at the expense of other countries' legitimate interests and puts "America first" over international rules. This is a typical move of unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying. China has issued the Chinese Government's Position on Opposing US Abuse of Tariffs to express our serious and just attitude, Lin said.
Lin further noted that the US abuse of tariffs deprives countries, especially those from the Global South, of their right to development. Analysis of WTO data shows that in light of the uneven economic development and strengths, the US tariff hikes will further widen the wealth gap among countries and less developed countries will feel a heavier blow. This gravely hurts efforts to realize the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The US tariffs with differentiated rates violate the WTO principle of non-discrimination, severely disrupt the international trade order and the security and stability of the global industrial and supply chains, severely undermine the multilateral trading system, severely hinder global economic recovery, and will certainly be rejected by the international community, said the spokesperson.
