• Trump and China are locked in a trade war, and for some products, the situation is getting out of hand.
• Thanks to the US and China's tariff tit-for-tat, EVs from China now face a 247.5% tariff rate.
• So don't expect to see cars from Tesla rivals BYD or Xiaomi on the road anytime soon.

It was already nearly impossible to buy a BYD in the US, but now things are getting somewhat out of hand.

After a rapid escalation in the trade war between the US and China over the past few days, anyone trying to import a Chinese electric car to the US faces a tariff rate of 247.5% — so don't expect to see any cars from Tesla rivals BYD or Xiaomi on the road anytime soon.

A spokesperson for the US International Trade Commission confirmed the total tax rate to Business Insider on Thursday.

That includes the 145% tariffs on Chinese goods announced by Donald Trump in recent days and the 100% levy on Chinese electric cars implemented by Joe Biden last year, plus a 2.5% duty rate on all EVs bought into the US for good measure.

The enormous number is a sign of how the trade war between the world's two largest economies has escalated to almost ludicrous levels. China retaliated against the latest US tariffs on Friday with its own 125% tariff on US goods.

It also shows how far successive US administrations have gone to prevent a wave of affordable, high-tech Chinese electric vehicles from reaching American shores.

According to classic car importer CFR Classic, the cost of importing a car from China to the US starts from $2,749. This means that anyone trying to import a Chinese EV would face extra shipping costs of at least $6,800.

That's not far off the cost of the $7,800 Seagull, BYD's cheapest electric car — and thanks to a host of additional regulations and restrictions, it is unlikely anyone would be able to legally drive one on US roads even if they could afford the shipping fees.

Chinese EVs pose an existential threat

Having once dismissed Chinese carmakers, the US auto industry has now decided BYD and its fellow upstarts represent an existential threat.

Elon Musk warned last year that China's EV companies would "demolish" their Western rivals without trade barriers. At the same time, Ford CEO Jim Farley was so impressed by Xiaomi's SU7 electric sedan that he flew one from Shanghai to Chicago.

The 250% trade barrier protects Tesla, Ford, and other automakers from having to compete with BYD and Xiaomi in the US, but it does little to protect them elsewhere.

Not content with crushing Western automakers at home, China's EV makers are now expanding rapidly in developing markets like Brazil and Southeast Asia.

They are also building factories and entering new markets in Europe, which is reportedly considering removing its own tariffs on Chinese electric cars after getting dragged into Trump's trade war.

Americans, who in surveys have consistently cited a lack of affordability and choice as major barriers to buying an EV, are starting to take notice.

YouTuber iShowSpeed, real name Darren Watkins Jr., showed off some of BYD's most eye-catching cars to his 38.6 million subscribers during a recent visit to China.

In a livestream with around 8 million views on YouTube, the streamer drove BYD's Yangwang U8 SUV, which can float on water for up to 30 minutes, and the U9, a $233,000 electric supercar with remote-controlled suspension that allows it to "dance" and jump over obstacles.

When he attempted to buy the U9 to take back to the US, however, the influencer was told it wasn't possible.

For many US drivers who want to see the Seagull or SU7 in action, high tariffs mean YouTube is their only option. Or they can just cross the border to Mexico, where Chinese EVs are rapidly becoming a common sight on local roads.

• Disney is working on a "Star Wars" horror project, according to "Andor" creator Tony Gilroy.
• The showrunner spoke to Business Insider on the red carpet for "Andor" season two.
• Gilroy previously suggested that the "Star Wars" franchise should expand into other genres.

"Andor" creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy says Disney is working on a horror project within the "Star Wars" universe.

The showrunner briefly touched on the future of the "Star Wars" franchise when speaking to SFX Magazine in March ahead of the final season of "Andor." He joked that he'd like to see "a three-camera sitcom in 'Star Wars' or a horror movie."

Gilroy spoke to Business Insider on the "Andor" season two red carpet in London on Thursday.

Asked what he would do with a "Star Wars" horror project, he said Lucasfilm and Disney already had one in development: "They're doing that. I think they're doing that. I think that's in the works, yeah."

Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gilroy didn't say whether the project was a TV show or a movie.

He also clarified his previous comments: "I'm agnostic about what should be done. I was riffing on the thing where I said, 'Oh, do a three-camera comedy,' so I was riffing. Sometimes riffing doesn't work with the 'Star Wars' community."

Referring to "Andor," Gilroy said: "The right creator, and the right moment, and the right vibe … you can do anything. So, my hope is that the show connects, and then we can pass along the favor that we were given from 'Mandalorian,' and we can pass along a good healthy backwind to someone else who wants to do something else cool."

The "Andor" series is a more serious affair than some of the other "Star Wars" projects of late. The political thriller focuses on the growing rebellion against the Empire in the years before 2016's "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," as well as 1977's "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope."

The first season, released in 2022, was met with widespread critical acclaim and earned a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Its success showed that the "Star Wars" franchise can explore wider themes and genres without relying on the Jedi, lightsabers, and the Force to keep its audience engaged.

"Andor" season two starts streaming on Disney+ on April 22.

• Marine leaders emphasize wargaming to foster learning and adaptability in troops.
• Wargaming helps Marines understand adversary tactics and adapt to emerging technologies.
• Marine leaders say it's important to embrace losing.

A Marine Corps general said this week that officers and troops can't shy away from wargaming, tough exercises in critical thinking.

They also can't be afraid to lose, he said.

"Why isn't everybody wargaming today, right now?" Brig. Gen. Matthew Tracy, the commanding general for the Corps' Education Command, asked Tuesday at the Sea, Air, and Space symposium, a big annual event for military and defense industry insiders.

"We know it's the best way to learn," Tracy said.

"We know they need to get some reps."

Some military leaders might be holding back from making wargaming more common because they fear losing in front of fellow Marines, including junior troops. It will take some bold leadership to help overcome fears of embarrassment, he said.

"We have to get down behind the weapon and show that it's okay to fail." That's key to leadership.

What is wargaming?

Thoughts of military wargames might bring to mind images of senior military officers clustered around a table with figurines representing maneuvering units. That's not wrong. Such games are still important for wargaming.

But nowadays, wargames also come in boxes, on computers, and even in the form of plain flash cards. Some are also played in the field with red and blue teams and aggressor squadrons.

They're for all ranks, but not as commonplace as some would like to see. Leaders like Tracy don't just want to see colonels sweating through these mental gymnastics. They also want to see the trigger-pullers at the lowest tactical levels involved.

At the symposium, a young Marine officer demonstrated the latest computer-based wargame while nearby cadets from the Naval Academy played an almost human-size version of a game that resembled the classic board game "Battleship."

Other games included increasingly complex elements for troops to consider, such as friendly and enemy nations' economic and diplomatic concerns, or how another country's civilians might react to the presence of US troops.

"When you have the time to think, it gives you the muscle memory about things to consider," explained retired Marine Lt. Gen. Lori Reynolds. She previously led the service's Cyber Command and also participated in Tuesday's event.

According to Reynolds, wargaming "improves your ability to understand adversary tactics and capabilities."

The tests force players to constantly check their assumptions about what's happening on the battlefield, she said, making it an ideal environment for learning by failure.

"It's important that we lose when it's okay to lose," she said. Better at the table than in battle.

Amid the Corps' efforts to modernize for a great-power fight in the Pacific after decades of war in the Middle East, checking old assumptions is even more important.

"When you think about Marine Corps Force Design efforts, we're going to be in a more distributed laydown than ever before," Reynolds said, referring to the Corps' initiative to cut mainstays like tanks and sniper units to build a force for combat on the island chains in the Pacific.

The geography of the Pacific — with its remote islands and varying degrees of infrastructure availability — has had war planners spinning their wheels in recent years to discern what the logistics support for such a war might look like.

Wargaming has previously forced planners to confront uncomfortable realities about Pacific warfare. For the rank-and-file, it could help troops to grapple with other emerging issues, like drone warfare and advancements in electronic warfare.

"The ability to teach at the lowest levels, not just what the capability of these emerging technologies can do, but how to properly employ it," makes wargaming more critical, Reynolds said, especially for the most junior ranks.

The notoriously rigid Marine Corps is known for favoring decentralized command structures to foster decision-making in the most junior ranks.

The idea is that when far removed from high-ranking leadership in combat, even the most junior enlisted troops can understand what's going on and make sound decisions to lead their small squads effectively.

Tougher wargaming

"Each year's wargaming efforts should surpass the last in complexity, challenge, and effectiveness," Tracy told Business Insider in an email after the symposium.

Part of the complexity that he envisions for thornier gaming could come in the form of AI-assisted games.

By including AI in wargaming scenarios, "you can look at a whole lot more potential outcomes, and you can look at them a whole lot faster," said Steven Wills, who moderated Tuesday's event and who serves as a research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses.

"Being able to examine a wider problem set, the thought is that we can think and operate faster than the bad guys and get ahead of their decision-making." Good wargaming, he explained, exposes unforeseen consequences of decision-making, setting off more complex chains of events.

But it doesn't give a participant a road map for winning.

"It lets you play through a whole lot of different outcomes so that when you think about an actual fight, you have an idea of what the outcomes might or could be," Wills said.

"It's all about trying to get you to think about the problem."

But thinking about those problems is going to take a level of vulnerability from Marine leaders, Tracy said.

"Creating a culture of wargaming starts at the highest levels, where leaders set the example by participating directly, making themselves vulnerable, and demonstrating a willingness to lose in order to learn," he told BI.

If you're always winning, you aren't being challenged, Reynolds explained. "It's okay to fail in a safe place that teaches growth."

"It teaches the importance of being a learning organization," she said. "You don't learn if you constantly win."

• US firms like OpenAI often keep their most advanced AI models behind paywalls.
• Chinese tech giants have been giving models away and are quickly integrating them into services.
• Analysts explain the key difference in strategies between China and the US.

Chinese tech giants are playing a different AI game.

US AI companies — like OpenAI and Anthropic — usually keep their most powerful models locked behind paywalls for consumers or license them to enterprises.

China's biggest players, in contrast, are handing theirs out for free — and rolling them out across everyday tech at breakneck speed, Ray Wang, a Washington-based analyst who specializes in AI and US-China tech statecraft, told Business Insider.

Instead of trying to outbuild leading players like OpenAI, China is out-deploying AI and "undergoing consolidation" — in other words, embedding AI into everything, Wang said.

That rapid integration could prove just as crucial as model quality in determining a country's overall competitiveness in AI, he said.

While the US maintains "a limited lead in frontier AI models over China," China's aggressive push to embed AI into everyday tech could give it an edge in real-world adoption, Wang added.

"China could have broader and faster — or on par with the US — AI integration in consumer devices and applications despite not having the most advanced LLM," Wang said, referring to large language models.

China's AI strategy

In recent weeks, companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent have flooded the market with powerful AI models and upgrades.

In late March, Alibaba announced a new AI model designed for developing cost-effective AI agents. That same month, DeepSeek unveiled an upgraded version of its open-source V3 large language model.

Models like Alibaba's Qwen2.5-Omni-7B and DeepSeek's V3 are freely available for anyone to download, modify, and integrate.

DeepSeek's latest models — especially the reasoning-focused R1 and R2 set to launch later this month or in May — mark a "significant inflection point," said Wei Sun, the principal analyst for AI at Counterpoint Research.

"These models not only match the best-in-class performance globally, but are also open-sourced under the most permissive MIT License," she said.

"That changes the game," she added.

Amid high costs and chip shortages, Chinese firms are also prioritizing rapid AI deployment and consolidation to stay competitive, said Wang.

Tencent has deployed its Hunyuan model and DeepSeek R1 across its massive ecosystem, including WeChat, he said. WeChat, China's biggest social media app, is used by nearly 1.4 billion people.

Baidu has also integrated DeepSeek R1 into its search engine, Wang said.

Baidu last month released two newer versions of its AI model — Ernie X1, a reasoning model, and Ernie 4.5, a revamped version of the company's foundational model. The tech giant said it will "progressively integrate" Ernie 4.5 and X1 into its product ecosystem, including Baidu Search, China's dominant search engine.

"These developments underscore China's increasing emphasis on AI integration, application-driven innovation, and enterprise solutions rather than solely competing on model sophistication," Wang said.

The US's AI upgrades

In contrast, the dominant trend in the US is to build advanced, closed-source AI models that require significant investment in computing power, said Wang.

Big Tech firms like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta have spent billions on the infrastructure underpinning emerging AI tech. The four companies are expected to spend a collective $320 billion in capital expenditures this year to broaden their AI capabilities.

Their flagship models — including OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini — are typically closed-source and monetized through APIs or enterprise licensing. This restricts access and limits how widely developers can experiment or build on them. However, OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, said in January that the company needs to "figure out a different open source strategy."

On April 10, Anthropic introduced a new $200-per-month subscription tier for its Claude chatbot — matching the premium pricing of rival OpenAI.

Meta is an exception with its open-source Llama model series. But despite its open-source stance, Meta still takes a capital-heavy approach, Wang said. Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has committed as much as $65 billion to AI projects this year.

Where China is catching up

A report released on Monday by Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Index found that US private AI investment grew to $109.1 billion last year — nearly 12 times China's $9.3 billion.

While the US has produced more AI models than China, the report found that Chinese models have "rapidly closed the quality gap."

China also continues to lead in AI publications and patents, the report found.

"Chinese vendors have come a long way from being caught surprised by ChatGPT to now competing head-to-head with top Western vendors," Lian Jye Su, the chief analyst at Omdia, told BI.

"It will take a while for China to compete in AI chipsets, but China has managed to provide solid alternatives to users looking at non-US AI software and applications," he added.

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To fight a trade war against China, most foreign policy experts would say that you need allies.

Why it matters: Over the past few months, the White House antagonized pretty much all its friends on the global stage, making it that much harder to carry out what is now a full-blown tariff battle with China.

---

The big picture: China is a formidable economic force, the second-largest economy in the world, with significant resources like a vast labor supply, manufacturing heft, a growing electric vehicle industry and expanding military might.

• "On critical metrics, China has already outmatched the United States," write the authors of a sobering new piece in Foreign Affairs.

Zoom in: The best shot the U.S. has at holding its economic edge is in forging partnerships, Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi write: "China possesses scale, and the United States does not — at least not by itself."

• "Because its only viable path lies in coalition with others, Washington would be particularly unwise to go it alone in a complex global competition."

The intrigue: The authors, who both worked on foreign affairs in the Biden administration, wrote the piece before "Liberation Day."

• But we "kind of saw that coming," Doshi, now a professor of security studies at Georgetown University and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council of Foreign Relations, tells Axios.

Zoom in: Such a coalition would go beyond the traditional post-Cold War frame of the U.S. playing a protector role. This would be more about forging economic partnerships.

• "I'm talking about us all getting together with our allies, putting tariffs or regulatory barriers up together to protect our industries from China's massive export capacity," Doshi says.
• "Ideally the U.S. would lower barriers between its allies, to put market share together so that our companies have a bigger playing field."

But right now, U.S. allies have the tariffs of Damocles hanging over their heads, says Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

• On Wednesday, President Trump announced a 90-day pause on his "reciprocal" tariffs, and it's not the kind of pause that refreshes.
• "It's not like other countries know for certain that they even have a reprieve," Edelberg says.

By the numbers: U.S. tariffs on China now average 134.7%, per a calculation from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

• China's been retaliating, this morning raising tariffs on U.S. goods even more to 125%. It could end very badly, though many expect some kind of deal or postponement.
• "At current tariff levels, U.S. exports to China are no longer marketable," China's tariff commission said in a statement quoted this morning in the Wall Street Journal.
• "If the U.S. insists on playing the numbers game with tariffs, China will disregard it." The statement adds that China will "fight" if the U.S. persists in harming its interests.

Yes, but: "We can put America first and work with other countries at the same time," a White House official tells Axios. "The U.S. is not acting alone in acting on China's unfair trading practices."

• They note many countries have initiated anti-dumping World Trade Organization investigations against China, and that "even Russia is imposing higher duties on Chinese EV cars."

For the record: "President Trump is playing chess while the Chinese are playing checkers, to the detriment of their economy and their people," says Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson.

Flashback: The trade war with China during the first Trump administration ended with an agreement. Among other things, China said it would buy $200 billion worth of American imports.

• That didn't happen. Partly, the coronavirus pandemic got in the way, but other factors were also at play.
• "Today the only undisputed 'historical' aspect of that agreement is its failure," Chad Bown wrote in a 2022 piece for the Peterson Institute.

Reality check: The current Chinese economy is in a bad place. Consumer prices declined for the second month in a row, per data out Wednesday, a worrying sign deflation might be setting in. Unemployment is rising.

• A trade war with its biggest foreign trading partner is only going to add to its woes.
• Still, China's leaders believe their country is better able to withstand the fight, Han Lin, the Asia Group China director in Shanghai, said on BBC Business Matters on Wednesday.

The bottom line: "They believe they could endure pain longer than the U.S. could. Of course, we'll see that thesis tested over the next several months."

• I'm more bothered than my children that they haven't won Student of the Month yet.
• I want them to win because it would validate that I'm raising exemplary students.
• Their best attributes aren't the ones on display in public but in the safety of our home.

I sat in the back of the school assembly, watching an old acquaintance slip into the center aisle, camera-ready as her son's name was called for the Student of the Month award. I was happy for her — I really was.

But when my daughter's teacher stood to offer her class their monthly awards, I saw my daughter sitting crisscross applesauce with her first-grade classmates, and my stomach knotted. I knew her name wouldn't be called. Clearly, the parents were notified ahead of time. Sure enough, her teacher announced another student's name. My daughter clapped and cheered, seemingly unbothered.

This year, neither my daughter nor her older brother have won Student of the Month. And neither has expressed disappointment. So, why do I care so much?

I started to question why I wanted them to win the award so much

Maybe it's because my husband is a teacher and school administrator, and most of his colleagues' children have already won the award this year. On his behalf, I feel the tiniest hint of professional pressure, as if their children's success reflects on them.

Or maybe it's because, with their class sizes —18 kids in my daughter's class and 22 in my son's — nearly half of the school will receive the award by the end of the school year, making it feel almost as if those who don't are being singled out in some way. Or maybe it's my own history; I won it every year as a child, and perhaps I've unknowingly placed that expectation on my children. Yet, in the end, what does it matter? I don't have my own awards framed in my office or the accomplishments on my résumé.

Are these awards public validations that we must be doing good jobs as parents and that our children are exemplary students? Or, do I simply covet that bumper sticker that signals, "This car is full of winners" because humans are competitive by nature?

As the mother of award-less children, I wonder if the Student of the Month award simply creates unnecessary competition. How much of a child's — or parent's — self-worth hinges on praise?

I just want to raise good children — and I am

My children aren't troublemakers, but they are introverted and sometimes standoffish to those outside their inner circles. Neither are natural leaders, rule followers, or people-pleasers. Still, I hoped they'd be noticed for their better qualities.

I wonder if their best attributes aren't the ones they put on display in public, but rather, most often viewed in the safety of our home. This weekend, they spent two hours assembling a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe car for their toddler brother and couldn't wait to show it to him in the morning. My daughter did all of the dinner dishes to surprise me, and my son grabbed groceries from my hands with a, "Here, Mom, let me get those for you."

These moments give me hope for the adults they'll become.

Still, I'll admit as the school year comes to a close, it's hard not to feel a twinge of disappointment when I realize my children are among the students who won't stand up at the school assembly to receive their Student of the Month award.

I have this lingering question of whether their teachers ever get to see their best sides, but maybe that's the point here — that it doesn't matter. They don't need to stand out among dozens of kids or be awarded on a stage because I recognize them every day in the small moments. I recognize how fortunate I am that my children don't need a piece of paper to feel validated — now it's my turn to do the same.

• I always judged stay-at-home moms and never wanted to be one.
• I got pregnant around the time my career was taking an unexpected turn.
• I feel lost when it comes to a career, but I have a newfound passion: my son.

It wasn't intentional, but it's been two years since I've worked a full-time job.

When asked what I do, I stumble over my words. I write articles occasionally as a freelance journalist, but I can't sugarcoat it: I'm a stay-at-home mom. Even typing it, I cringe a little.

Before becoming a stay-at-home, I saw my friends who were well-off and stay-at-home moms. Their days seemed to be all about lunches and playing tennis.

I was judgmental, for sure. I used to think, "Must be nice."

Now I know — yes, it is nice, but it's also a very challenging job.

My life took an unexpected turn after getting pregnant

When I was 25, I moved to Los Angeles with big dreams of working in Hollywood as a sitcom writer. That didn't pan out, but I did meet my husband.

When COVID-19 hit, it was even harder to find a steady job in television so I took a position in podcasting. I was there a little over a year but left when things went south — the company declared bankruptcy a few months later. I was also newly pregnant.

I didn't look for a new full-time job while pregnant. Becoming a sitcom writer had been an uphill battle and one I was ready to give up. I took a few short-term contract positions, and after giving birth to my son, I wasn't working at all.

When I finally started to consider working again, there'd been a shift in the podcasting openings I found — many producer roles also required editing experience, which wasn't a skill I had or was interested in.

Since becoming a mother, I can't seem to find a career path that excites me

I'm a self-admitted lost soul when it comes to a career. I still look for jobs and often apply.

However, when I really think about what it would mean to take any of the jobs I apply for, sadness washes over me at the thought of being away from my son.

Maybe it's time to accept what I do feel passionate about: my son.

Also, if I returned to work I would need to find childcare since a day job would likely go to 5 p.m. and my son is out of preschool by 3 p.m. Plus, my son only goes to preschool three days a week.

Whether it's day care or a nanny, the amount of money it would cost makes taking any job less appealing. It's just not worth it.

If I had a clear career trajectory, it might be a different story.

I was surprised that I enjoy being a stay-at-home mom

I was with my son every single day until he started preschool at 1 ½ years old. I was there for all the milestones: first word, steps, giggles.

I was amazed at how this helpless being transformed into a chatty toddler, full of personality, right before my eyes. Though cliché, it was true: The days are long but the years are short.

Of course, some days are just hard. His naps offer me a much-needed break but then sometimes they don't happen. Food gets thrown on the just-washed floor. If he doesn't have a cold, then he has a stomach bug. It feels like a week without an illness is a rarity.

Even now that's he in school part time, my hours alone fly by, and I never accomplish all the to-dos I hope to. At 3 p.m. I switch back to mom duty and I must entertain him, keep him away from the remote (although sometimes you just have to put on the TV), and manage his multistep bedtime routine.

Even with all the trying moments, I've realized I'm the happiest I've ever been. My son makes me laugh constantly, and I can't tell him enough how much I love him.

I am privileged that my family can afford to live on my husband's salary alone. An additional salary would certainly be helpful, but the opportunity cost of me finding work — and not spending my days with my son — is too high.

My name may not be in the credits of your favorite comedy show, but I know people whose names are and I wouldn't trade places with any of them.

Although my days may not be glamorous and are often monotonous, I love my life as a stay-at-home mom.

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