Author: guaraxyz

US escalates sanctions, criminalizes global use of Huawei’s AI chips.

By Miguel do Rosario, editor of Global South News.

On May 13, the US Department of Commerce issued a sweeping new directive—imperialist, authoritarian, and disturbingly dystopian in scope.

Under this latest order, merely using Huawei’s Ascend 910B, 910C, or 910D artificial intelligence chips could be deemed a violation of US export laws—even if those chips are used outside the United States, including inside China itself.

Although the Ascend chips are designed and manufactured by Huawei, the US government argues that they were developed using American-origin technologies, design software, or manufacturing equipment. That claim triggers the so-called Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR), which allows the US to enforce restrictions on any foreign-made product built with American tech, regardless of where it’s produced or deployed.

So, even if a Chinese company uses an Ascend chip inside China, it could be in breach of US law—because, according to the Commerce Department, it’s “highly likely” that the Ascend 910B, 910C, and 910D chips incorporate American technology.

Washington’s crackdown on Huawei began in May 2019, when the company was added to the US “Entity List,” cutting it off from key suppliers and US technologies. That move effectively pushed Huawei out of the global smartphone market, as it lost access to advanced chips from suppliers like TSMC and Samsung.

In response, Huawei ramped up development of its own chips in partnership with Chinese state-owned semiconductor maker SMIC. By 2024 and 2025, the company began mass-delivering the Ascend 910C chips to domestic clients, signaling Huawei’s comeback in the AI sector and posing a serious challenge to Nvidia and Apple’s dominance in China.

In January 2025, the US tightened the screws further, expanding its restrictions on AI chip exports to China and requiring strict licenses for any tech transfers. China countered by launching AI systems like DeepSeek—initially trained on Nvidia hardware but now optimized to run on Huawei’s Ascend chips. DeepSeek quickly stood out for its low cost and high performance, emerging as a competitive alternative to Western models.

The new Commerce Department alert is explicit: any company, in any country, using Huawei’s Ascend chips could face accusations of violating US export controls. That includes Chinese firms using domestically designed and manufactured chips inside China’s own borders.

Even more extreme, the US is now threatening to sanction companies that use Chinese AI models—like DeepSeek, Qwen, or InternLM—even if those models are run on Nvidia chips made in America. The stated goal is to prevent “adversaries” from accessing US technology, but in practice, the measure suffocates the digital sovereignty of countries without domestic AI ecosystems.

Penalties for violations could include trade bans, exclusion from the global financial system, loss of access to essential software, and even arrest of executives traveling through US-allied countries.

Experts like Bill Gates have warned this strategy is likely to backfire, accelerating the development of alternative technologies outside the US orbit. For China and other nations, the only viable response is to double down on building independent tech and financial ecosystems.

As Jonh Pang from Multipolar Peace put it:

“Anyone, anywhere, using Huawei Ascend chips can be prosecuted for violating US export controls. A Chinese company using a 100% China-designed and China-made chip, inside China, would still be in violation. But if you use Nvidia chips to run a Chinese AI model, you’re also in trouble. The future under ‘American AI leadership’ is ChatGPT on Nvidia. Monopoly by decree.”

Timeline of key events:

• May 2019: Huawei added to US Entity List.
• 2024–2025: Huawei launches and distributes Ascend 910C chips at scale.
• January 2025: New US restrictions on advanced AI chip exports to China.
• May 13, 2025: Global alert issued on use of Huawei’s Ascend chips.

This tightening of US rules represents an unprecedented move in extraterritorial enforcement, with direct impacts on other nations’ digital sovereignty and the global tech market. What began as a race for innovation has now escalated into an open battle for technological sovereignty—and the US message is unambiguous: obey or be punished.

—

Sources:

– US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS)
– Comments by Jonh Pang and Arnaud Bertrand
– Coverage by Reuters, Financial Times, and Nikkei Asia on May 2025 sanctions
– Bloomberg interview with Bill Gates (2025)

By Miguel do Rosario, editor

In 2024, China came close to hitting a $1 trillion trade surplus — but just missed the mark. Last year’s surplus stood at $992 billion. Some analysts said it was “close to a trillion,” but the truth is, China hadn’t crossed that line yet.

Now it has.

The figures come straight from the Chinese government — more precisely, from the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China (GACC). The 12-month compilation was put together exclusively by Cafezinho.

According to official data, China exported $3.62 trillion worth of goods over the 12 months ending in March 2025, marking a nearly 7% increase from the previous period and a stunning 56% jump over the past seven years.

Imports during the same period totaled $2.54 trillion, remaining flat compared to the previous year.

That pushed China’s trade surplus over the past 12 months to a whopping $1.08 trillion — an all-time record.

The trade surplus is calculated as exports minus imports.

China’s total trade volume — the sum of exports and imports — reached $6.16 trillion over the 12 months through March.

Looking at the monthly and quarterly breakdowns, the numbers also hit historic highs.

In March alone, Chinese exports totaled $313.9 billion, up 12% from March 2024. Imports for the month dropped 5% to $221.3 billion, giving China a staggering monthly surplus of $102.6 billion — another record, and 75% higher than the surplus posted in March 2024.

The first-quarter numbers tell a similar story of record-breaking trade.

We’ve put together a series of tables below to help you get a sense of how the world’s top industrial powerhouse is doing on the trade front.

You’ll see, for instance, that the United States’ share of China’s total trade dropped to just 10% in March — the lowest level in decades — compared to 18% for ASEAN countries and 12% for the European Union.

China’s trade with Thailand, a key ASEAN member, grew 23% in March and 15% for the first quarter.

For the first time, China is also breaking out the countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative in its trade data. Altogether, these countries accounted for 51% of China’s total trade volume in March and during the January–March period.

Meanwhile, Brazil is missing out on the action with China. In the first quarter, China slashed its imports from Brazil by a staggering 34%. As a result, Brazil’s share of China’s total imports plunged from 4.7% in Q1 2024 to just 3.3% in Q1 2025. In March alone, Chinese imports from Brazil tumbled 36%!

One big reason seems to be a sharp decline in Brazilian soybean exports to China. It’s a clear sign that Brazil’s failure to diversify its export lineup with China is a costly strategic mistake.

This slump flipped the Brazil-China trade balance — which had been heavily in Brazil’s favor — into negative territory both in March and for the full first quarter. However, this trend could reverse quickly starting in April as the new soybean crop comes to market. Plus, the ongoing US-China tariff war is creating fresh opportunities for Brazilian exporters.

Among China’s top exports, technology products stood out. In the first quarter, China shipped $209 billion worth of high-tech goods, a 6% increase from a year ago — outpacing overall export growth.

China also remains a powerhouse in mechanical and electronic goods. In Q1, China exported $47.7 billion worth of computers (up 7% year-on-year) and $41 billion in chips (up 11%).

On the import side, China remains a major buyer of agricultural products (8% of its total imports) and oil (14%, including crude and refined). The country is also a significant importer of computers, chips, and aircraft.

By Miguel do Rosário

The interview with China expert Elias Jabbour on the program *Reconversa*, hosted by Reinaldo Azevedo and Walfrido Warde, delivers high-quality insight into the frenzied geopolitical shifts of recent days.

To think geopolitics today is to think about China.

And to think about China is to grasp its historic challenge—a challenge often thrust upon it—to resist Western imperialism.

Anyone who thought the concept of imperialism was outdated, gathering dust alongside books from the 1960s or confined to leftist discussion circles, may be rethinking that stance after President Donald Trump launched an economic offensive against China of unprecedented scale in modern history.

True, the U.S. has imposed sanctions and tariffs on other nations since its inception. The free trade system promoted by the so-called collective West, especially after World War II and the creation of multilateral organizations to oversee international commerce, has always had to bend to American interests.

But what we are witnessing now has no precedent.

In 2024, the trade flow between China and the United States reached $688 billion—11% of China’s total trade volume that year, which surpassed $6 trillion and represents a significant share of global trade.

The Trump administration slapped China with cumulative tariffs of 125% on all its products.

So far, China has responded with 84% tariffs, also across the board on U.S. exports.

There’s no other way to define this—given both the severity and the consequences—than as an act of war. And it became even more explicit when Trump “backed off” on similar harsh tariffs for other countries, dialing them down to 10%, while maintaining the maximum pressure on China.

“War is merely the continuation of politics by other means,” said Clausewitz, and there’s little doubt that Trump’s tariff blitz—despite his announcement of a 90-day “pause”—marks the beginning of World War III.

Naturally, humanity’s challenge will be to keep the conflict confined to economic skirmishes and avoid military escalation. But it would be naive to think that’s sustainable in the long run.

Take the aggressive rhetoric and economic pressure the U.S. has applied to Iran, complete with open threats of bombing—this too is a way to pressure China, which, as the world’s largest oil importer, would be the primary victim of any spike in fossil fuel prices.

A Middle East war involving Iran would send oil prices skyrocketing.

The U.S., on the other hand, might be somewhat insulated, having once again become the world’s top oil producer.

Just this week, Ukraine’s president Zelensky launched a bizarre anti-China propaganda campaign, showcasing a few Chinese mercenaries captured on the Russian side of the battlefield as if they were official agents of the Chinese state.

Of course, there are mercenaries of all ethnicities fighting on both sides. The Russians have also identified Brazilians fighting for Ukraine, but Putin hasn’t taken to the global media to claim that Brazil is siding with Kyiv.

Both Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu are trying to frame their conflicts as part of a broader global war of “Western values” against imagined enemies—a loose (and undoubtedly fictitious) alliance of Islamic forces, progressive movements, Russians, non-aligned nations of the Global South, and above all, China.

Thomas Friedman, a well-known mouthpiece for Western interests in major U.S. and European newspapers, recently jumped into the tariff debate to stress the need to protect Europe’s “industrial democracies” from China’s advance—a bizarre and cynical way to frame yet another ideological bloc.

But behind the curtain of bluster and stock market speculation, the reality is simple: the West’s “industrial democracies” are falling behind, for many reasons.

Their political model has ossified into a formalistic caricature of democracy where oligarchies rotate power. Europe—still relatively egalitarian—would rather cling to genocidal imperialism, hostile to diplomacy and built on lies, than embrace a new world order in which Global South nations, led by China, would gain greater voice and presence in global debates.

Europe, for better or worse, may still enjoy a few more decades of comfortable decline—its high-speed rail, free public universities, and liberal democratic gains mostly intact since the end of WWII.

Brazil, however, is not so fortunate. Like many of its Global South peers, Brazil is still living through its own “hundred years of humiliation.”

China’s “century of humiliation” refers to the period from the end of the Opium Wars—won by Britain—until the Communist Party came to power in 1949.

But one could extend that humiliating century, marked by foreign plunder and oppression, into the late 1970s, when China finally resolved many internal contradictions, broke out of global isolation, and launched the rapid development process that continues to astound the world.

“Chinese socialism is characterized by the transformation of science into an instrument of government,” Jabbour says in the interview. “In an obscurantist world—this world we’re in—socialism today manifests as the transformation of reason into governance.”

That, he argues, is the way forward for Brazil and the entire Global South: science. Even in political construction.

“Our problem is that we’re unable to develop a science that enables us to govern the country through a broad front. That too is science,” Jabbour says, noting that major national breakthroughs came when the left broke out of its isolation.

“An isolated communist is a dead communist. That’s a historical lesson. Independence, the republic, abolition, the 1930 Revolution, Lula’s 2002 election—none of these civilizational milestones came from a single party. They were built by heterogeneous majorities.”

Now heading the Pereira Passos Institute, a public agency tied to Rio de Janeiro’s city government, Jabbour is trying to persuade Mayor Eduardo Paes of the need for deeper integration between Brazil’s economy and China—the world’s most dynamic economic pole.

“I’m really concerned about the post-Lula era. And I consider Eduardo to be a key figure. He straddles the line between JK and Teotônio Vilela. That’s how we should see him, in my humble opinion.”

Paes, he explains, mirrors JK (Juscelino Kubitschek) in his liberal roots gradually shifting toward developmentalism. One example is Paes’s resistance to a vision of Brazil’s future centered on agribusiness from the country’s central-western region—a vision potentially cemented by the new Chancay port in Peru, which will export Brazil’s grain and minerals once the necessary transport infrastructure is complete.

At the same time, Paes echoes Teotônio Vilela, a conservative senator who became a voice of resistance during Brazil’s military dictatorship—driven by similar historical dilemmas.

A likely candidate for Rio’s state government in 2026 and a public supporter of Lula’s reelection, Paes, according to Jabbour, has a “strategic objective” of making Rio “the vanguard of national resistance” against the reactionary values represented by the agribusiness heartland, Bolsonaro-style politics, and the fascist far right.

“He’s someone who moved from one camp to another. Not by choice, but because history demanded it.”

And now—with Trump’s tariff apocalypse lending his words even more weight—Jabbour draws a telling contrast: “American foreign policy is the Old Testament. China’s is Confucius. The idea of a ‘shared future for humanity’ didn’t originate with the Communist Party—it’s Confucian.”

“Brazil’s reindustrialization,” he continues, “and I say this to Eduardo Paes, hinges on full productive integration with China. But we need to talk to the Chinese like adults.”

To Jabbour, full integration is not about ceding sovereignty—it’s about leveraging Brazil’s massive trade flow with China to finance a modernization of infrastructure and the productive system.

“Our current trade with China is colonial. It offers no strategic return. It doesn’t build the future. It’s short-sighted,” Jabbour warns.

He urges Brazil’s intellectuals to develop a science “capable of grasping the concept embedded in China’s real social movement”—and to adapt those lessons in a way that advances Brazilian society.

Jabbour says he feels “very alone” in Brazil’s political discourse. He faces resistance from the left for his pragmatic stance—both in advocating broad political alliances and rejecting rigid ideological dogma.

“There’s a difference between fighting for equality, peace, justice, and socialism—and getting lost in fantasies, in a Pink Panther world. You have to ask whether science supports your hypothesis. That’s the question I’ve been asking since ’94 or ’95, with over 30 years of studying China.”

“People confuse what it means to be radical. They think it means being reckless,” Jabbour adds.

“But to be radical is to have a sense of historical process. I consider myself radical because I go to the root of things—because I have that historical vision. And people often forget that being broad in politics can mean being radical in substance.”

He’s also rejected by the right for defending a “science of projection”—an economy rooted in long-term planning, which he sees as the core formula behind China’s success in building socialism.

His favorite thinkers along those lines include Ignacio Rangel, Luiz Gonzaga Belluzzo, Darcy Ribeiro, and Celso Furtado.

According to Jabbour, the main contradiction in Brazil today isn’t between fascism and democracy per se, but between a submissive, neoliberal fascism and a true national development project.

“You’re not alone anymore,” Reinaldo Azevedo tells him at the end of the interview. The author of this piece disagrees with Jabbour on that point—and a few others.

First, Jabbour is not alone. He may be in the minority, but he’s not isolated. There are people trying to think strategically about Brazil. What’s desperately needed, though, are more forums, events, and spaces to bring these people and ideas together.

A second critique—more philosophical than polemical—is that a culture of planning must necessarily include political planning. If we aim for long-term economic projects, the same should apply to politics. This is especially important in dispelling the clouds of pessimism.

Before China reached the political stage that enabled its astonishing development, it went through a long and painful period of political maturation.

We are living through our own “hundred years of humiliation.” We’ve overthrown two “dynasties”—the neoliberal one of the 1990s and the fascist one in 2022—but both still have their tentacles in today’s politics. Only when we crush them once and for all—through a medium- to long-term strategy—will we be ready to begin our own accelerated development journey, cutting across this country like China did, with high-speed trains.

By Miguel do Rosario, editor of Global South News

While the United States and its Western vassals burn through billions more dollars on a new military front in the Middle East, bombing civilians in Yemen, the Chinese dragon continues to win the economic battle simply by doing business.

According to exclusive data compiled by Cafezinho and Global South News (the English-language “sibling” outlet of Cafezinho), China’s foreign trade has once again shattered records in the first two months of the year.

From January to February 2025, China’s total trade volume (the sum of exports and imports) reached $909.37 billion. The country’s trade surplus with the rest of the world in this period hit $170.52 billion, marking a staggering 36% year-over-year increase and setting a historic record.

The comparison to the United States is inevitable. Despite indiscriminately imposing sanctions on countless countries and pouring vast sums into industrial policies since Biden’s tenure, the U.S. trade deficit continues to grow.

In February 2025 alone, the U.S. trade deficit hit -$155.6 billion—nearly double the -$92 billion deficit recorded in the same month the previous year. But a full-year comparison is more telling. In 2024, China’s trade surplus reached a historic high of nearly $1 trillion, while the U.S. moved in the exact opposite direction, posting a deficit exceeding $1.2 trillion.

This, of course, explains the desperation of the new U.S. administration under Donald Trump and its delusional policy of imposing tariffs on the entire world. The American production system has lost competitiveness and is now trying to claw back ground through sheer noise.

Over recent decades, while the U.S. political elite wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars on pointless wars, China built a high-speed rail network spanning 50,000 km. The U.S. has zero km of high-speed rail.

As the U.S. funds genocide in Gaza (now expanding to the West Bank and Lebanon) and boasts about installing a former Al Qaeda operative to lead Syria, China announces that state-owned chipmaker SMIC has successfully produced a 5-nanometer chip—despite (or rather, because of) all sanctions imposed by the White House. This humiliates the lapdog nations of the Global North, which have lost hundreds of billions in Chinese business only to cling to a losing horse.

Let’s return to China’s trade data, which carries immense weight because the “West” cannot pretend it doesn’t exist or accuse Beijing of distorting numbers through bureaucratic trickery. Falsifying trade statistics is extremely difficult, as the figures must align: Every product China imports from Country X is recorded by both Chinese customs and the customs of the exporting nation.

When analyzing China’s key trade partners and its overall foreign trade, two factors stand out. The first is the deep economic interdependence with the United States.

Despite the political screeching from Washington, U.S.-China trade grew in 2024, reaching nearly $700 billion ($688 billion to be exact). The all-time peak, however, occurred in 2022 at $752 billion.

2025 has started strong for bilateral trade, with total volume rising 2.4% year-over-year to $102 billion in the first two months. China’s surplus with the U.S. reached $49 billion, up 2.1%.

The second factor is the Asian pivot of Chinese trade, driven by the region’s economic development. Instead of exporting coups, as the U.S. does in its sphere of influence, China exports high-speed rail, ports, roads, and digital connectivity. With ASEAN alone—the bloc comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia—China’s trade volume hit nearly $1 trillion in 2024. This dwarfs its $688 billion trade with the U.S. and $785.8 billion with the EU during the same period.

Notably, ASEAN excludes Japan, with which China recorded $308 billion in trade in 2024.

China is using infrastructure investments to cultivate new markets, reducing reliance on the U.S. and Europe. Some of these markets are in Asia, while others lie in Africa and Latin America.

The data suggests Brazil should pay close attention to this Chinese strategy. China holds massive surplus capital that must be exported to sustain its growth, creating opportunities for emerging economies.

For Brazil, modernizing national infrastructure—especially freight and passenger transport—is urgent. This includes expanding metro systems, connecting states via high-speed rail, and slashing structural logistics costs.

China is diversifying its consumption patterns, incorporating products like coffee, which could reshape global markets. Coffee, being labor-intensive, offers job-creation potential unlike mechanized commodities.

Per official Chinese government data, China imported $918 million worth of coffee over the 12 months ending February 2025—the second-highest value on record, trailing only the same period a year earlier.

Brazil supplied 30% of China’s coffee imports in those 12 months, followed by Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

But soybeans remain Brazil’s top export to China. In 2024, Brazil shipped $36.5 billion in soybeans to China, accounting for a staggering 69% of all Chinese soybean imports. Total Chinese soybean imports for 2024 reached $52.73 billion.

In 2023, Brazil also held 69% of China’s soybean market. However, in the first two months of 2025, Brazil’s share plummeted to 27%, with a nearly 60% drop compared to the same period in 2024. The reasons likely include last year’s Brazilian crop failure and Chinese importers rushing to buy U.S. soybeans ahead of anticipated retaliatory tariffs.

With a bumper Brazilian harvest expected this year, the country will likely reclaim its position as China’s top soybean supplier.

Finally, let’s discuss oil.

China runs an oil deficit. In 2024, it imported over $500 billion in oil, resulting in a $450 billion deficit. This explains why Chinese state oil giants are heavily investing in overseas exploration, including in Brazil.

The U.S., meanwhile, after years of deficits in the early 2000s, has rebounded to a massive surplus. In 2024, U.S. petroleum product exports hit $320 billion, with a $79 billion oil trade surplus—the largest in years, possibly ever.

China’s oil deficit also underscores its growing reliance on Russia, its top supplier since the Ukraine war. In 2019, Russia supplied just 6% of China’s oil imports. By 2024, this jumped to 19%, holding steady into early 2025.

Other key oil suppliers to China in early 2025 (ranked by volume) include Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Iraq, the UAE, Oman, and Brazil.

In 2024, Brazil accounted for 4.6% of China’s oil imports—identical to the U.S. share. But in early 2025, Brazil overtook the U.S., exporting $3.45 billion in oil versus America’s $3.21 billion.

Conclusion

To reiterate: China now holds the world’s largest pool of surplus capital for infrastructure investment, and Brazil has become one of its most strategic partners. Our economies are deeply integrated, as Brazil supplies the oil, iron ore, and protein essential to Chinese life. What do we lack? Infrastructure, particularly in transport—a sector where China shines as the global leader.

A cornerstone of China’s development has been rail transport: metro systems in megacities, modern freight railways, and high-speed networks connecting the nation. It’s time for Brazil to leverage this partnership to transform its own crumbling transport system.

Sources: China Customs, US Census Bureau, Comexstat (Brazil).

On November 11, 2024, the Global South Media and Think Tank Summit took place in São Paulo. Under the theme “Development and Revitalization: A New Journey for the Global South,” around 350 representatives from 170 media organizations, think tanks, governments, and companies from over 70 countries and regions gathered to discuss integration and cooperation among nations that advocated for a fairer world.

Organized by China’s Xinhua News Agency and Brazil’s EBC, the summit launched a platform for media exchange and collaboration within the Global South. “The platform will help inject new vitality and positive energy into strengthening solidarity and cooperation in the Global South and contribute to building a community with a shared future for humanity,” the organizers emphasized.

Brazil’s Minister of Institutional Relations, Alexandre Padilha, highlighted constructive dialogue, mutual benefits, and respect for differences in Brazil-China relations. He recalled President Lula’s statement that the Global South is an essential part of solutions for the planet.

Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a message emphasizing that the Global South accounts for more than 40% of the world’s GDP. He noted that the rise of these countries represents decisive global changes.

Hu Heping, Executive Deputy Chief of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China, advocated for a community with a shared future and the modernization of the Global South, which represents over 80% of the world’s population.

Fu Hua, President of Xinhua, added that more than 80% of global development in recent years has come from the Global South. He emphasized the role of BRICS and the Belt and Road Initiative.

Jean Lima, President of EBC, outlined three key points he considers fundamental: combatting disinformation and fake news, regulating Big Tech companies, and promoting media education.

Chen Yiming, head of the Latin America office of the People’s Daily, China’s largest newspaper, recalled the forum held in October in Rio de Janeiro in partnership with Monitor Mercantil, as well as joint interviews with Brazilian and Peruvian media outlets as part of the effort to build a shared future among Global South nations.

The Global South Media and Think Tank Summit, taking place in São Paulo, will conclude this Tuesday.