ChinaTalk

In February, the Supreme Court ruled Trump's IEEPA tariffs illegal. So why is everyone still paying them? Because the administration rebuilt them: first under Section 122, then under Section 301, and now the 301 tariffs are in court too.

So ChinaTalk's series on the people suing the U.S. government over tariffs continues.

Ethan Frisch is the co-founder of Burlap & Barrel, a single-origin spice company importing from about 28 countries, and a plaintiff in both the Section 122 suit (which he won) and the Section 301 challenge, argued before the Court of International Trade the day before we recorded. Guest host Peter Harrell — a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a visiting scholar at Georgetown Law's Institute of International Economic Law, and an attorney — joins Jordan to explain where the litigation goes from here.

We discuss…

From aid worker to spice importer: wild cumin from northeastern Afghanistan, a company started out of a one-bedroom apartment in Queens, and carrying hundred-pound duffel bags of spices through customs

Why a spice tariffs won't protect U.S. industry

Liberation Day changing businesses overnight

Suing the president: an even split of fan mail and hate mail, a pro bono partnership, and why Ethan doesn't understand what everybody else is so scared of

Why the big companies sit on the sidelines: Peter on Fortune 500 firms and major law firms afraid of retaliation, why the lawsuits have come from small businesses and Democratic-led states, and why USTR and CBP have stayed professional anyway

The Section 301 case: a statute used some 130 times for targeted trade disputes, now stretched to 60 jurisdictions covering 99% of U.S. trade; a forced-labor justification that gives China the same 12.5% rate as two-thirds of the world; and why the government will likely keep collecting through 12 to 18 months of appeals

Tariffs after Trump: what a 2028 Democrat would cut and what they'd keep

Plus: why you can't haggle with CBP, Jane Goodall's wild honey, pomegranate molasses made under pressure, paying farmers whatever they ask, and whether Zohran should hire Ethan to run the city's supermarkets.

Listeners can use code CHINATALK at burlapandbarrel.com for a free jar of their choice on a first order over $15.
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After the global financial crisis, China added a third of global GDP to its bank assets in just eight years... the largest single-country credit expansion in at least a century.

Today investment is contracting, growth is less than a percent, and the financial system that fueled China's growth is now the thing holding it back.

Logan Wright, partner at Rhodium Group and my former boss, joins ChinaTalk to discuss his new book, Broken China: How the Economic Miracle Shattered and What It Means for the World.

Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations co-hosts.

We discuss…

The crisis that already happened: why the September 2021 protests in Evergrande's lobby were China's catharsis moment

Decay instead of collapse: why credit growth fell from 18% a year to 5%, why Beijing keeps rolling over loans to zombie state firms, and why in China "the path to crisis is reform"

Jordan and Brad discuss Xi's Perspective: Does supply-chain dominance matter more than GDP?

Twelve million graduates a year, the youth unemployment numbers that vanished in 2023, why all of China's new strategic industries add up to about 6% of GDP, and why a $10,000 BYD doesn't matter if your kid can't get a job

Who's paying for China's AI?

Plus: Logan's case that the US no longer has a systemic economic rivalry with China, and Brad's pushback that Chinese supply-chain controls have so far beaten Western demand-side leverage
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WarTalk regulars Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute, Justin McIntosh, and Tony Stark join Jordan.

We discuss…

The Potemkin Pacific — why Paparo has half the planet on his map and nothing to fight with, and how the Iran blockade became the status quo

The midterm budget squeeze — what a Democratic Senate means for the defense topline, why Anduril won’t keep working at risk, and how a shipbuilding binge could hollow out the force

Who replaces Hegseth — the two Mike Rogerses, and why the talent pool for a lame-duck Pentagon is drying up

The AI Force — why a SOCOM-style AI branch cuts against a technology meant to be everywhere, and what a benchmark-setting version could actually do

Manned-unmanned teaming — why putting sailors on robot ships is “asinine,” and what combined arms for robots should look like

Gifts for Beijing — the Anduril drone Iran fished out of the Gulf, dud PrSMs as intelligence windfalls, and why compute still can’t blow anything up on its own

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Julian Gewirtz, author and former Biden NSC China director, joins ChinaTalk days before Xi Jinping’s first White House visit since 2015. With little substantive agenda on the table, what is the US getting in exchange for the symbolism and pageantry of a state visit?

We discuss:

Trump-Xi summit scenarios, Beijing’s management of uncertainty and protocol, and how the script of US-China diplomacy has flipped, with things once seen as American concessions to China now treated as concessions from Beijing;

Julian’s framework for a K-shaped US-China relationship, with leader-level diplomacy pulling upward while competition pulls downward;

What Xi’s visit says about the changing political salience of China in the US

Why Beijing’s public statements on AI risk don’t necessarily tell us how it will handle pacing and safety;

What the decline of Xi Jinping could mean for a political system and why China’s next succession could be especially difficult to predict;

China-maxxing from Kissinger to Trump

Plus: The Scholars (儒林外史) and why Qing-dynasty satire about corrupt scholars might make you feel better about America in 2026.
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Garrett Berntsen was last seen on ChinaTalk in his role as Deputy CDAO at the State Department. He then went to the Department of Defense for a little bit, and now makes a return in his new role as Chief AI Officer at Accenture Federal Services.

We’re going to talk about what the national security community needs — beyond just API access to wonderful models — in order to really change how it does its mission.

Our conversation covers:

Why the U-2 spy plane offers a surprisingly useful lesson for AI: The hardest part of adopting transformative technology isn’t building it, but redesigning the institutions, workflows, incentives, and decision-making systems around it.

The government’s need to manufacture its own “forcing functions”: How carrots, sticks, budget cuts, and a willingness to create winners and losers could help bureaucracies move faster.

Giving the troops the tools and getting out of the way: Why Berntsen thinks the U.S. military’s greatest AI advantage may come from empowering service members to experiment, improvise, and “figure it out.”

Will AI eventually negotiate with AI? We debate whether models can move beyond advising diplomats and executives to actually conducting negotiations.

Plus, cyber challenges, a chat app for government, and book recs.

Thank you to Accenture Federal Services for bringing us this episode.
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