China

Ken Griffin, one of Republicans’ billionaire donors who’d convinced themselves that President Trump wouldn’t do some things he campaigned to do, finally got it right last week. Griffin inadvertently identified the irony of Trump’s presidency so far: The man who made a brand of his own name (“TRUMP,” all caps) — and a fortune licensing it as a signifier of success on products from hotels to sneakers — has all but wrecked the United States’ brand in 100 days.

“We’re eroding that brand right now,” Griffin lamented at an economic forum. Everything that “USA” has long stood for — financial stability, military strength, cultural prestige and more — undermined. “It can take a very long time,” Griffin warned, “… to remove the tarnish.”

A related sad irony: Trump has rivaled President Franklin Roosevelt, who popularized the “first 100 days” marker, for swift, decisive action out of the gate. But where FDR rescued a crashed economy and envisioned a social safety net that’s endured nearly a century, Trump took what economists considered a “stellar” economy and crashed it, while deputizing minions to tear holes in the safety net and take chainsaws to the federal government and the rule of law.

Lawsuits against the Trump administration proliferate at the rate of two a day, according to trackers, especially over billionaire Elon Musk’s assaults on federal workers and spending laws, and against Trump’s immigration crackdown. The president continues to defy a Supreme Court ruling to “facilitate” the return of a man wrongly deported to El Salvador’s gulag. As J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a federal judge named by President Reagan, wrote for the 4th District Court of Appeals on April 17, “The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process.”

Internationally, Trump is wrecking the legacy of Roosevelt’s last days, the global structure of alliances that has been a force-multiplier for the United States against Russia, China and other adversaries. The dollar and U.S. Treasuries are diminished as safe harbors. The toxicity of the Trump-U.S. brand was dramatically evident in elections on Monday in Canada: Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party came from way behind to win, as voters took out their disgust with Trump’s Canada-bashing on conservative candidates.

Characteristically, Trump conjures his own self-serving reality. At a MAGA rally in Macomb County, Mich., on Tuesday, he exulted, “This is the best … 100-day start of any president in history, and everyone is saying it.”

No, they’re not. A slew of recent polls show that Trump’s job-approval rating has slid to the lowest of any new president in eight decades, with nearly six out of 10 Americans disapproving of his performance in surveys by Pew Research Center and AP/NORC. On a range of issues, including the two that arguably got him elected, immigration and the economy, Trump now gets negative reviews, including in a Fox News poll.

“We’ve just gotten started,” he said in Michigan. “You haven’t even seen anything yet.”

On that he’s probably right: Worse is yet to come.

Americans seem to think so. On Day 100 came a report that consumer confidence plunged in April, a signal of a recession ahead. On Day 101, Wednesday, came news that the economy contracted 0.3% in the first quarter, after a 2.4% annual growth rate in the previous quarter — the last of the Biden presidency. Stocks tumbled, yet again.

That “golden age” that Trump announced in his inaugural address seems to begin and end with the new bling in the Oval Office.

His tariffs have taken such a toll on businesses and consumers that he softened auto-related levies in time for his Michigan visit. But that only exacerbated the chaos surrounding his “beautiful” tariffs, and the economic uncertainty he’s spawned. And it put the lie to his claims that Americans don’t pay tariffs, China does.

And because consumers pay, Trump had to clean up another 100th-day tariff mess, in aisle Amazon. On Tuesday he phoned CEO Jeff Bezos, another of his billionaire donors, to get the e-commerce giant to drop a plan to show tariff costs on customers’ bills. (They’ll still pay more, they just won’t see the proof.)

Yet 100 days is 99 more than candidate Trump said he’d need to Make America Great Again. He campaigned ad nauseum saying he’d solve this, that or another problem on Day 1. At least 53 times he promised to end Russia’s war on Ukraine before he took office. (He’d spoken “in jest,” Trump told Time magazine last week.)

What he did do before he took office? Admit it would be “very hard” to bring down prices as he’d pledged. (Forget bringing them down: He drove them up with tariffs.)

“There will be a little disturbance, but we’re okay with that,” Trump told a joint session of Congress in March. Oddly, he’s been hailing as his economic model the late 19th century period when “it was all tariffs” and America was “most successful.” In fact, that era saw repeated recessions, depressions and financial panics.

Who’s going to tell him he’s wrong? Trump, in the bubble of sycophancy he’s created in the Cabinet, Congress and among his base, proceeds with few checks. “I run the country and the world,” he boasted to the Atlantic last week.

He’s not wrong, given that he does lead what is still the world’s superpower and — impulsive, unpredictable and vengeful as he is — often forces others to bend his way. He hasn’t totally destroyed America’s brand. But he still has more than 1,300 days to go.

@jackiekcalmes

After being sworn in as second-in-command of the Arcadia City Council, Eileen Wang addressed a controversy that has taken a back seat in the months since the Eaton fire devastated nearby Altadena.

“We broke up the fiance relationship,” Wang said of her former campaign manager, Yaoning “Mike” Sun. “We keep the friendship.”

Wang said their romantic relationship ended last spring, eight months before federal prosecutors charged Sun with conspiracy and acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.

The April 15 statement from Wang, now mayor pro tem of the San Gabriel Valley city, was one of the few times she has publicly addressed the charges against Sun, who allegedly worked with China to cultivate Wang, in hopes that she would rise in politics and help promote pro-China policies, including opposition to Taiwan.

Facing calls for her resignation, Wang had vowed in January not to step away from the council, emphasizing that she was “not responsible for the action of others.”

Wang did not respond to several calls and emails from The Times. The other four council members also did not respond to emails.

“I have a lot of questions,” said former Councilmember Sheng Chang, who ran against Wang in 2022 and recalled being stunned by the fundraising prowess and plum endorsements of “the new kid on the block.”

Sheng Chang, who lost an Arcadia City Council race to Eileen Wang in 2022, at his office in San Gabriel.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Arcadia City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto released a short statement soon after Sun was charged in December, saying Wang was cooperating with the FBI and that Sun “had no involvement whatsoever with City of Arcadia business or decision-making.”

Wang, who immigrated to the U.S. from China three decades ago, was never charged, and it’s unclear whether she was aware of the alleged scheme. In a criminal complaint against Sun, prosecutors identified her only as “Individual 1.”

The complaint provides a rare glimpse into the covert influence the Chinese government allegedly seeks to have on politicians and organizations in the San Gabriel Valley, a landing spot for many Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants.

Campaign records examined by The Times indicate that Sun served as Wang’s campaign manager, lending money and helping bring in donations — some of which came from sources with ties to the Chinese government.

James Su, president of EDI Media in West Covina, donated $500 to Wang’s campaign on Oct. 10, 2022. Su’s media company, which includes several L.A.-based media groups, including the Chinese-language website iCity News, had to register as a foreign agent in May 2022 because it formerly printed the U.S. version of a newspaper considered a “foreign mission” of the Chinese government.

As the November 2022 election neared, iCity News published a slew of glowing articles on Wang, a political novice and owner of an after-school tutoring company.

“Remember! You must vote for Eileen!” concluded an article, one of roughly half a dozen the outlet published that year on Wang, who would receive an endorsement from Su as well as the $500 donation.

There were no stories on Chang, Wang’s opponent, a Taiwanese immigrant who ran a bare-bones campaign with $34,000 he lent himself.

Lina Li, an office manager for EDI who said she was responding on Su’s behalf, wrote in an email that the $500 donation was made from Su’s personal funds because he believed Wang was a “good candidate.” The company has not had to register as a foreign agent since 2022, she said.

The L.A. arm of Sing Tao US, a subsidiary of a Chinese-owned newspaper that is registered as a foreign agent, also donated to Wang’s campaign, giving $3,300 on Aug. 9, 2022, according to campaign finance records.

Wang paid the company the same amount for print ads, according to the records.

The Sing Tao Daily is one of the oldest newspapers in Hong Kong and has long been featured on newsstands in Chinatown and the San Gabriel Valley. Sing Tao US wrote in a government filing it is “editorially independent” from its Chinese parent company.

Robin Mui, chief executive of Sing Tao US, said Wang’s campaign made an error on its campaign finance forms. Sing Tao never contributed to Wang’s campaign and only received payment from it for ads, Mui said.

The “L.A. [branch] never made any political contribution — unless you prove to me otherwise,” Mui said.

The criminal complaint against Sun described extensive interactions between Sun and John Chen, who was sentenced to federal prison last year for acting as an illegal Chinese agent and plotting against Falun Gong, a spiritual practice banned in China.

Chen reportedly described a former L.A. County supervisor, identified only as M.A., as “friendly to China.” Chen’s Chinese handler told him that he would be given funds to “socialize with” the former supervisor in the hopes of getting an introduction to M.A.’s successor, identified as C.B.

Former Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who oversaw a district including parts of the San Gabriel Valley from 1980 to 2016, said he first met Chen at a dinner for a Chinese association and would occasionally run into him at community events. He never felt Chen was pushing a political agenda, he said.

Antonovich said the only time he felt pressure from the Chinese government was before Double Ten Day, a national holiday in Taiwan on Oct. 10. Every year, the Chinese consulate would reach out to each supervisor and ask them not to attend local celebrations, Antonovich said.

Antonovich said he didn’t heed the guidance and spoke at Double Ten celebrations twice.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who succeeded Antonovich, said she has never met with Chen or Sun and has no records of either man reaching out to her office, according to her spokesperson.

Much of the campaign Sun orchestrated for Wang would be considered standard fare for an up-and-coming San Gabriel Valley politician.

Wang, a longtime resident of Arcadia, hired Santa Maria Group, a prominent lobbying firm. She nabbed plum endorsements from big-name politicians: L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis, U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) and Chu’s husband, former state Assemblymember Michael Eng.

In total, Wang raised $119,000, mostly from donors with addresses in the San Gabriel Valley. Another top fundraiser, Councilmember Michael Cao, brought roughly $125,000 into his campaign that year.

Chang, who was seeking a third term on the City Council after winning a seat in 1994 and 2000, said that for the first time, his heritage became a talking point during an election, when a supporter asked him to remove her name from his list of endorsements because she had heard that he supported Taiwan independence.

Wang’s Instagram account from that time is full of videos of her on the campaign trail, set to zippy pop songs. She previously told The Times that she knocked on every door in her district multiple times to make sure she reached every resident.

“I walked about 140 days … I never stopped,” she said over a dim sum lunch last November, before the criminal charges against Sun. “I walked my district five times.”

Social media campaign depicts fictional scenes of officials becoming disillusioned with ruling Chinese Communist Party.

The CIA has launched a Chinese-language social media campaign calling on government officials in China to switch sides and leak secrets to the United States.

The two videos released on Thursday depict fictional scenes involving Chinese officials who approach the top intelligence agency after becoming disillusioned with the ruling Communist Party of China (CCP).

In one of the videos, an actor depicting a senior CCP member describes the fear he feels for his family as he witnesses officials around him being purged like “worn-out shoes”.

“This man, who has diligently worked his way to the top throughout his life, now profoundly realises that no matter how high his status is, it is insufficient to protect his family in these turbulent and unsettling times,” reads a Chinese-language description of the video on YouTube.

“He yearns to take control of his destiny and find a path to safeguard his family and the achievements he has built through years of hard work. Aware that everything he possesses could vanish in an instant, he is driven to make a difficult but crucial decision to safely reach out to the CIA.”

The videos, which were released on platforms including Facebook, Telegram, Instagram and X, contain instructions on “safely” and “securely” contacting the CIA, including by using the dark web browser Tor.

“One of the primary roles of the CIA is to collect intelligence for the president and for our policymakers,” CIA director John Ratcliffe said in an interview with Fox News.

“One of the ways we do that is by recruiting assets that can help us steal secrets.”

China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Desmond Shum, a Chinese property tycoon-turned-dissident who lives in the United Kingdom, described the CIA campaign as the most “aggressive public move” by the agency against China in living memory.

“This kind of public outreach is exactly the sort of provocation that enrages the CCP – and Xi Jinping personally,” Shum said on X, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“His obsession with lifelong rule stems from a singular goal: to secure the Party’s unshakable control over China.”

Ministry of Commerce says ‘door is open’ to talks, but it is willing to ‘fight to the end’ otherwise.

China has said it is considering proposals by the United States to begin negotiations on US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

The US has “recently, through relevant channels, actively conveyed messages to China, expressing a desire to engage in talks”, China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Friday.

“China is currently evaluating this.”

Beijing’s remarks come after Chinese state media reported earlier in the week that the Trump administration had “proactively reached out” through multiple channels.

Trump’s trade war with China has resulted in a de facto mutual trade embargo between the world’s two largest economies.

Businesses and investors have been anxiously waiting for signs that Washington and Beijing will ease their steep tariffs on each other’s goods amid fears that a protracted standoff will inflict serious damage on the global economy.

The International Monetary Fund last month lowered its global growth forecast for 2025 to 2.8 percent, down from 3.3 percent in January, while JPMorgan Chase has put the likelihood of a US recession this year at 60 percent.

Trump, who has slapped a 145 percent tariff on Chinese exports, has repeatedly insisted that his administration is in negotiations with Beijing, a claim that Chinese officials have rejected as “groundless”.

On Wednesday, Trump said there was a “very good chance” he would reach a trade deal with China, so long as it was “fair”.

In its statement on Friday, China’s Commerce Ministry said that its stance on the trade dispute had been consistent.

“If there is a fight, we will fight to the end; if there are talks, the door is open,” the ministry said.

“The tariff war and trade war were unilaterally initiated by the US, and if the US wants to talk, it should demonstrate sincerity by preparing to correct its erroneous actions and rescind the unilateral imposition of additional tariffs,” it said, adding that “attempting to use talks as a pretext to engage in coercion and blackmail” would not work with China.

‘Wakeup call’

In an interview with Fox News that aired on Thursday night, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Trump’s tariffs were badly hurting the Chinese economy and Beijing was keen to talk.

“The Chinese are reaching out, they want to meet, they want to talk,” Rubio told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “We’ve got people involved in that.”

Rubio also said that the tensions were a “wakeup call” for the US and the country should not be as dependent on China.

“Two more years in this direction, and we are going to be in a lot of trouble, really dependent on China,” he said. “So I do think there is this broader question about how much we should buy from them at all.”