By ELAINE KURTENBACH, Associated Press Business Writer

China’s Commerce Ministry said Friday that Beijing is evaluating multiple approaches by the Trump administration for trade talks, but steep tariffs imposed by Washington must go.

A ministry statement reiterated China’s stance that is open to talks, but also that Beijing is determined to fight if it must. It said one-sided tariffs of up to 145% remain an obstacle, undermining trust.

“The tariff and trade wars were unilaterally initiated by the U.S., if the U.S. side wants to talk, it should show its sincerity, and be ready to take action on issues such as correcting wrong practices and canceling the unilateral imposition of tariffs,” it said.

FILE – A made in China sticker is displayed on a hat at a store in Chinatown in San Francisco, April 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

An unnamed ministry spokesperson was cited as saying that Beijing had taken note of various statements by senior U.S. officials indicating a willingness to negotiate over tariffs.

“At the same time, the U.S. has recently taken the initiative to convey information to the Chinese side on a number of occasions through relevant parties, hoping to talk with the Chinese side. In this regard, the Chinese side is making an assessment,” it said.

But it emphasized that China would regard overtures without a change in President Donald Trump’s sharp tariff hikes as insincere.

“Saying one thing but doing another, or even attempting to engage in coercion and blackmail under the guise of talks, will not work on the Chinese side,” it said.

China is in the midst of a public holiday, with government offices and markets closed. But share prices in Hong Kong jumped 1.7% early Friday, while Taiwan’s benchmark index was up 2.2%. U.S. futures also advanced.

FILE – President Donald Trump, left, poses for a photo with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

As of Friday, the Trump administration is ending a duty-free exemption on low-value imports from China. That will mean higher prices and delivery delays when the government starts collecting tariffs on every single shipment.

Beijing has responded to Trump’s tariff hikes by raising its own duties on imports of U.S. products to as high as 125%. It has also tightened restrictions on exports to the U.S. of certain strategically important minerals and stopped importing a wide range of U.S. farm products.

At the same time, China has sought to join with other countries to build a united front against Trump, while ramping up its own countermeasures to the impact of Trump’s tariffs.

Trump has slapped a global 10% import tax, or tariff, to try to compel manufacturers to shift factories back to the U.S. He ordered double-digit “reciprocal” tariffs for many countries but then postponed their implementation for 90 days to allow time for negotiations. He has also hit foreign steel, aluminum and autos.

The toughest measures were reserved for China, the world’s biggest exporter and second largest economy.

His announcements of higher tariffs, suspensions, and then more tariffs have left companies, investors and consumers stymied over what comes next, hitting consumer confidence.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is leading the administration’s approach to China, has said he expects Beijing to call because the tariffs are not sustainable.

In an interview Thursday with Fox Business, Bessent said the main issue with Beijing was not high tariffs but other barriers.

“There’s a whole range of bad behavior by the Chinese,” Bessent said, mentioning theft of intellectual property like trademarks and cyberhacking.”

“So, everything is on the table for the economic relationship,” he said, adding ”I am confident that the Chinese will want to reach a deal.”

Beijing has shown scant willingness to compromise, however, with its foreign ministry posting a strident video on social media this week saying the U.S. has “stirred up a global tariff storm.”

It vowed China would not “kneel down” in the trade war.

“Kneeling only invites more bullying,” it said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aiming to slash public subsidies to PBS and NPR as he alleged “bias” in the broadcasters’ reporting.

The order instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies “to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS” and further requires that that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing for the news organizations. The White House, in a social media posting announcing the signing, said the outlets “receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”

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It’s the latest move by Trump and his administration to utilize federal powers to control or hamstring institutions whose actions or viewpoints he disagrees with. Since taking office, Trump has ousted leaders, placed staff on administrative leave and cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to artists, libraries, museums, theaters and others, through takeovers of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Trump has also pushed to withhold federal research and education funds from universities and punish law firms unless they agreed to eliminate diversity programs and other measures Trump has found objectionable.

The broadcasters get roughly half a billion dollars in public money through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and have been preparing for the possibility of stiff cuts since Trump’s election, as Republicans have long complained about them.

Paula Kerger, PBS’ CEO and president, said in a statement last month that the Trump administration’s effort to rescind funding for public media would “disrupt the essential service PBS and local member stations provide to the American people.”

“There’s nothing more American than PBS, and our work is only possible because of the bipartisan support we have always received from Congress,” she said. “This public-private partnership allows us to help prepare millions of children for success in school and in life and also supports enriching and inspiring programs of the highest quality.”

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting sued Trump earlier this week over his move to fire three members of its five-person board, contending that the president was exceeding his authority and that the move would deprive the board of a quorum needed to conduct business.

Just two weeks ago, the White House said it would be asking Congress to rescind funding for the CPB as part of a $9.1 billion package of cuts. That package, however, which budget director Russell Vought said would likely be the first of several, has not yet been sent to Capitol Hill.

The move against PBS and NPR comes as his administration has been working to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which were designed to model independent news gathering globally in societies that restrict the press. Those efforts have faced pushback from federal courts, who have ruled in some cases that the Trump administration may have overstepped its authority in holding back funds appropriated to the outlets by Congress.

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed.

There’s a technological revolution underway that’s making it faster and easier for scientists to see the molecules that undermine human health — and possibly fight the problem.

The “resolution revolution” involves cryo-electron microscopes, whose ever-improving detectors and software are producing three-dimensional images in unprecedented detail, aiding drugmakers.

They reveal detail so precise that biologist Andrew Ward, of Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, was able to spotlight the Achilles’ heel of several types of coronaviruses in images that he produced in 2016-17.

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The weaknesses he called out? Spike proteins — the now-familiar elements that allow such viruses to infect cells.

This helped drugmakers to know exactly what to target when SARS-CoV-2 — the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 — emerged in late 2019.

Ward produced an even clearer snapshot of the proteins in 2020, further helping scientists create vaccines.

With additional help from him, effective vaccines were quickly produced.

“That was just the beginning,” said Ward. “Now, this technology is opening doors that help us understand the roots of diseases like cancer and neurodegeneration, including Alzheimer’s.”

“It routinely lets us see life’s tiniest machines — proteins, viruses and the atoms they combine — with breathtaking clarity,” he added.

The research isn’t widely known to the public, partly because it’s hard to conceive of how any microscope — let alone one that’s 10 feet tall — can flash-freeze moving molecules, exposing their structure and purpose.

Ward offered a simple analogy to explain the matter.

“Imagine walking into a dark room,” he said. “You can roughly tell where the furniture is, and see shadowy outlines of a couch or a table. But once the lights are on, you can visualize color, texture, size and fine details.”

That’s what cryo-electron microscopes do — and with great speed.

Ward could only produce about 200 images per day when he was earning his doctorate at Scripps from 2003 to 2008, when he was using a far less powerful type of cryo-electron microscope. And he had access to it only a day or two each month.

Today, he can generate 1,500 images per second on Titan Krios, the largest and most powerful of Scripps’ seven cryo-electron microscopes.

If you were able to stack up the images he takes during a six-hour period, they would rise as high as Mount Everest, said Ward, who has been collaborating with institutes on SARS-CoV-2, Lassa, HIV, malaria and the H5N1 bird flu.

Lab manager Hannah Turner shows the Titan Krios electron microscope at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, on Friday, April 11, 2025. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

To the unfamiliar eye, the images look bizarre. Some resemble bumpy, frozen lava, others crinkly Christmas wreaths. Still others look like the knotty cords on old landline telephones.

But their importance is understood by scientists, especially those focused on preparing the world for whatever pandemic could come next.

It’s a bit of a fluke that Ward is a rising star at an institute that has helped develop more than 15 FDA-approved drugs and treatments, including Humira, which is used by people who suffer from arthritis.

He was interested in science growing up outside Boston — less so when he entered Duke University as a freshman.

Things quickly changed when he took a work-study job in a campus lab, where cell biologists Michael and Mary Reedy let him tinker. Before long, Ward was helping build the components of microscope cameras and detectors, and was dazzled by what they could do.

“I began to see molecules and atoms,” said Ward, now 46. “It kind of blows your mind to follow things at that resolution.”

Electron microscopes have existed since the 1930s, and they’ve played a vital role in revealing the structure of proteins and viruses and how they work. But the instruments didn’t start to enter their current golden age until roughly 2001, the year Ward arrived at Scripps as a lab technician.

The advancements have come especially quickly over the past decade, starkly improving image resolution and enabling scientists to see individual atoms. Software has also made it easier to see molecules interact with prospective drugs, helping determine which ones should go on to large-scale clinical trials.

The boom, locally and worldwide, didn’t go unnoticed. In 2017, three European scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for helping transform cryo-electron microscopes into indispensable tools to explore the life sciences.

Ward says he’s happy to be in the background. But he has emerged as a leader in the field — mostly through his use of Titan Krios.

“Big Daddy,” as Ward calls it, is highly sensitive. The towering microscope sits on stabilizers to prevent something as simple as a slammed door from producing vibrations that could mess up image-taking. It operates in silence for the same reason.

Lab manager Hannah Turner holds grids, a single one used to hold a sample, placed into the Titan Krios electron microscope at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, on Friday, April 11, 2025. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

In plain terms, the microscope freezes biological samples, then hits them with electron beams that create images.

“Once you see the arrangement of atoms, the connectivity of molecules, you can become an engineer,” Ward said. “You can move things around and manipulate the building blocks of life to make new therapeutics and vaccines that have much higher likelihood of success compared to engineering without blueprints.

“We’ve sped up the process of choosing which one should be a go, or no-go, for clinical trials,” Ward said.

That doesn’t mean scientists are close to flooding the market with new means of prevention.

“The potential vaccines will collectively have to go through five to seven years of trials in humans,” he added. “But we are no longer shooting in the dark or relying on empiricism.

“We can now shine a light — or rather a very powerful electron beam — on the science driving vaccine research.”

By Alex Brown, Stateline.org

ISSAQUAH, Wash. — In the wake of recent natural disasters, state leaders across the country are finding that emergency support from the federal government is no longer a given.

Under President Donald Trump, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has denied federal assistance for tornadoes in Arkansas, flooding in West Virginia and a windstorm in Washington state. It also has refused North Carolina’s request for extended relief funding in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

While it’s not uncommon for the feds to turn down some requests for disaster declarations, which unlock federal aid, state leaders say the Trump administration’s denials have taken them by surprise. White House officials are signaling a new approach to federal emergency response, even as Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem threaten to shut down FEMA altogether.

“The Federal Government focuses its support on truly catastrophic disasters—massive hurricanes, devastating earthquakes, or wide-scale attacks on the homeland,” Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the National Security Council, which advises the president on issues of national security, said in a statement to Stateline.

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Hughes said state and local governments “often remain an impediment to their own community’s resilience.” He called on states to take on a more extensive role.

“States must have adequate emergency management staff, adoption and enforcement of modern building codes, responsible planning and strategic investment to reduce future risk, commonsense policies that prioritize preparedness over politics, disaster reserve funds to handle what should be routine emergencies, pre-negotiated mutual aid and contingency contracts that speed up recovery, and above all, an appetite to own the problem,” the statement said.

State emergency management leaders say the federal retreat from disaster response has upended a long-established system.

“This is very unusual,” said Karina Shagren, communications director with the Washington Military Department, which oversees the state’s emergency management division. “This is the first time in recent memory that we have hit all the indicators to get FEMA’s public assistance program and we’ve been denied.”

Michael Coen, who served as chief of staff at FEMA during the Obama and Biden administrations, said the president has “broad discretion” to approve or deny disaster requests, regardless of whether they meet specified conditions. If Trump intends to curtail federal support, Coen said, he should give states clear guidelines.

“They should have a dialogue with the states, so the states aren’t spinning their wheels making requests that are going to get denied,” Coen said.

He added that states need guidance if they’re expected to build emergency management programs to take on what the feds once handled. Not all states, Coen said, have the capacity to replicate those functions. And disasters are expected to increase in frequency and severity because of climate change.

“Having that capability in every single state instead of having one FEMA is not the best use of tax dollars to prepare for the worst day,” he said.

Historically, FEMA has coordinated the federal response during emergency situations. In the National Security Council statement, Hughes said Trump has promptly authorized “life-saving emergency support to states during and in the immediate aftermath of disasters.”

But the agency’s larger role has focused on recovery after disasters, assessing damage and distributing funding to help communities rebuild. Now, some communities are finding that support is no longer a sure thing.

Issaquah, Washington, was among the cities hit hard by the “bomb cyclone” that ripped through the state last November. Severe winds killed two people in the state, knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of residents and caused millions in damage, state officials said.

A city of about 40,000 residents in the Cascade foothills, Issaquah’s costs from the storm totaled $3.8 million — covering road repairs, removal of 800 tons of tree debris and overtime pay for first responders. Mayor Mary Lou Pauly said the city has seen four events since 2020 that qualified for federal disaster aid, with no previous denials. If Washington is unable to win its appeal with FEMA, she said, Issaquah will take a financial hit to its reserves, leaving it more vulnerable to future storms.

“We put a lot of investment in being resilient,” Pauly said. “When you get to a number like $3.8 million, that is too big of a number for us to be able to rebuild without assistance. Our residents pay federal taxes, and this is what they think they pay them for, this is what they expect their national government to do. They do not want me to set property taxes 100% higher.”

Pauly echoed Coen’s view that FEMA should give states a clear outline of the role it will play.

“What we all want to know is what are the rules of the game?” she said. “If the criteria has changed, then why aren’t we getting told about it?”

Washington state leaders said they were shocked when FEMA denied their request for $34 million to help repair roads, utilities and power systems. Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson said the state’s application met all of the “very clear criteria to qualify.” He has vowed to appeal the decision.

“We were really relying on that funding,” said Shagren, of the Washington Military Department. “If the appeal is denied, our local jurisdictions will have to prioritize which projects they can move forward with and which they don’t. They’re going to be impacted greatly. This wasn’t some small storm.”

Other states also have been surprised by FEMA denials. Arkansas suffered 14 tornadoes in March, triggering a request for a disaster declaration from Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. But the feds told state leaders to handle it on their own.

“[I]t has been determined that the damage from this event was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state, affected local governments, and voluntary agencies,” the federal government’s denial read, according to Arkansas Times.

Sanders has appealed that decision, saying the disaster caused “widespread destruction” that requires federal help.

In West Virginia, state leaders asked for disaster aid to cover 14 counties that were struck by flooding in February. But FEMA denied individual assistance to seven of those counties. Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey said in a statement that he is looking at options to appeal, but praised the Trump administration for its “strong support” following the floods.

Democratic leaders in the state have called on Morrisey to demand more help from the feds, WOWK reported.

Meanwhile, FEMA has said it will no longer match 100% of North Carolina’s spending to recover from September’s Hurricane Helene. Democratic Gov. Josh Stein said the cost share was crucial to the state’s efforts to rebuild.

“The need in western North Carolina remains immense — people need debris removed, homes rebuilt, and roads restored,” Stein said in a statement, according to NC Newsline. “I am extremely disappointed and urge the President to reconsider FEMA’s bad decision, even for 90 days.”

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.