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China’s exports to the United States tumbled in April while its trade with other economies surged, suggesting that President Donald Trump’s tariffs offensive is hastening a shakeup in global supply chains.Total exports from China rose 8.1% last month from a year earlier, much faster than the 2% pace most economists had been expecting. That was much slower than the 12.4% year-on-year increase in March. Imports fell 0.2% in April from the year before.Shipments to the U.S. sank 21% in dollar terms as Trump’s tariffs on most Chinese exports rose to as high as 145%. With Chinese tariffs on U.S. goods at 125%, business between the two biggest economies has grown increasingly uncertain.China’s imports from the U.S. dropped more than 13% from a year earlier, while its politically sensitive trade surplus with the United States was nearly $20.5 billion in April, down from about $27.2 billion a year earlier.In the first four months of the year, China’s exports to the United States fell 2.5% from a year earlier, while imports from the U.S. fell 4.7%.A potential break in the tariffs stalemate could come as soon as this weekend. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other senior trade officials are due to meet with Chinese officials in Geneva on Saturday. But Beijing and Washington are at odds over a raft of issues, including colliding strategic interests that will may impede progress in the talks.Some of the punitive tariffs, including Beijing’s retaliatory 125% tariffs on U.S. exports, could be rolled back, but a full reversal is unlikely, Zichun Huang of Capital Economics said in a report.“This means China’s exports to the U.S. are set for further declines over the coming months, not all of which will be offset by increased trade with other countries. We still expect export growth to turn negative later this year,” Huang said.Whatever the outcome of those discussions, the rapid increase in Chinese exports to other countries reflects a restructuring that began years ago but has gained momentum as Trump has raised barriers to exporting to the U.S.Global manufacturers have been looking for alternatives to a near total reliance on manufacturing in China after disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for more diverse options.The need for more versatile supply chains grew more apparent as Trump hiked tariffs on Chinese exports during his first term in office. Most of those remained during former President Joe Biden’s term.Exports to the United States accounted for about a tenth of China’s total exports in April and the U.S. is still China’s largest single-country market. But the European Union and Southeast Asia are larger regional export markets.Trade with a broader grouping, the 15-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which does not include the United States, is still bigger. And exports to countries participating in China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” a vast network of Beijing-supported infrastructure projects, are bigger still.In the first four months of the year, exports to the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations rose 11.5% from a year earlier, and those to Latin America also climbed 11.5%. Shipments to India jumped nearly 16% by value, and exports to Africa surged 15%.Some of the fastest growth was in Asia, reflecting moves by Chinese and other manufacturers to diversify their supply chains outside of the Chinese mainland. Most notable were exports to Vietnam, which jumped 18% year-on-year. Exports to Thailand were up 20%.Back in China, preliminary data have shown a sharp decline in shipping and other trade activity. Earlier this week, Beijing announced a barrage of measures meant to counter the impact of the trade war on its economy, which was already struggling to regain momentum after the pandemic and a lengthy downturn in its housing sector. Associated Press researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed. Elaine Kurtenbach, AP Business Writer
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E-Commerce
As a woman in the United States, turning 21 means beginning a lifelong journey of getting a pap smear every three years. It’s not a pleasant experience. You’ll lie down with your legs in stirrups, while your doctor inserts a speculum inside your vagina. Then, she or he will take a sample from your cervix with a hard plastic device to figure out if you have any trace of HPV (the human papillomavirus), a sexually transmitted infection that can cause cervical cancer, or cancerous and precancerous cells. Starting today, however, there’s an easier solution. Teal Health, a woman’s health company founded in 2020, has developed a new product that allows you to take a sample at home and send it to a lab for testing. Today, the device received FDA approval, so it is now possible to order one online. It will be covered by insurance. The company is still working on out-of-pocket pricing, but aims to make the product as affordable and accessible for women as possible. Teal was founded by Kara Egan, a health tech investor, and Avnesh Thakor, an interventional radiologist and Stanford School of Medicine professor. Egan realized that many women were skipping their pap smears. (In 2019, 23% of women were overdue for their cervical cancer screening.) But cervical cancer is the fourth deadliest cancer among women. “It’s just so easy to accidentally skip your appointment,” says Egan. “That’s especially true if you don’t have insurance or don’t have a doctor you see regularly.” Some proportion of women also skip their pap smear because the process itself is so uncomfortable. “It can feel like a very violating experience, but it is also so important,” Egan says. [Photo: Teal Health] How Teal works Working with the design studio Ideo, Egan and Thakor have developed a device that looks a like a tampon and is designed be comfortable to insert with a plastic applicator. Ideo designed the wand so women could use it with one hand while standing up while in the bathroom. A woman will insert the wand into her vagina and use a thumb-operated wheel to deploy a sponge at the tip. Spinning the sponge collects cell samples from the cervix. From there, she can use the wheel to retract the sponge back into the wand to prevent contamination. The sponge pops off the applicator, and is then sent to a lab where it will be tested. Teal is a telemedicine platform. When you buy the wand, you will see a doctor online who will walk you through the process of using the device. If the results come back abnormal, the doctor will walk through the results with you and also talk about the next steps, which likely will involve seeing a doctor and following some sort of treatment plan. Part of what motivated Egan to pursue this device is that cervical cancer can be easily treated with early testing. HPV is a common virus that is commonly spread through sex or skin-to-skin contact. There is now a vaccine that pediatricians give to both girls and boys that reduces the risk of contracting HPV. Most HPV infections don’t lead to cancer. But if even a woman does get infected with HPV, it is relatively easy to clear the infection if it is detected early enough. By taking a sample of cervical cells, we are now able to identify the 14 different kinds of precancerous cells associated with cervical cancer. “If you screen for cervical cancer and catch it early, it is nearly 100% curable,” says Egan. After developing the wand, Teal health has done clinical trials to identify its effectiveness. Then, the company sent the results to the FDA to get approval to start selling the device. That approval came through today. Teal’s wand will be available through the brand’s website. The product will be covered by insurance. But the company also wants to make it available to women who aren’t covered by insurance. It hasn’t established the out-of-pocket cost yet, but Egan promises that the final pricing will be as affordable to as many women as possible. It will also have a donation program, so that some women can get the test for free. “We will find ways for people who don’t have the means to make sure they’re still accessing screening,” she says. “No one needs to get cervical cancer.”
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E-Commerce
The Trump administration on Thursday proposed a multibillion-dollar overhaul of a U.S. air traffic control system that it said still relies on floppy disks and replacement parts found on eBay and has come under renewed scrutiny in the wake of recent deadly plane crashes and technical failures.The plan calls for six new air traffic control centers, along with an array of technology and communications upgrades at all of the nation’s air traffic facilities over the next three or four years, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.“We use radar from the 1970s,” said Duffy, who compared the proposal with upgrading from a flip phone to a smartphone. “This technology is 50 years old that our controllers use to scan the skies and keep airplanes separated from one another.”How much it will all cost wasn’t immediately revealed. Duffy said he’ll work with Congress on the details.“It’s going to be billions, lots of billions,” he said.The plan has an aggressive timeline, calling on everything to be finished by 2028 although Duffy said it may take another year.Demands to fix the aging system that handles more than 45,000 daily flights have increased since the midair collision in January between an Army helicopter and a commercial airliner that killed 67 people over Washington, D.C.That crashand a string of other crashes and mishapsshowed the immediate need for these upgrades, Duffy said in front of airline officials, union leaders and family members of those who died in the crash near Reagan National Airport.The proposal sets out to add fiber, wireless or satellite technology at more than 4,600 locations, replace 618 radars and more than quadruple the number of airports with systems designed to reduce near misses on runways.Six new air traffic control centers also would be built under the plan, and new hardware and software would be standardized across all air traffic facilities.The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week budgeted $12.5 billion to overhaul the system, but that estimate came out before the Transportation Department revealed its plan. Duffy said the final price tag will be higher.U.S. Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, who heads the House transportation committee, called the amount only a “down payment.”To build the system quickly, as planned, Duffy said Congress must give the Federal Aviation Administration all the money up front and streamline the permitting process.“The system we have here? It’s not worth saving. I don’t need to preserve any of this. It’s too old,” Duffy said.Trump said Thursday that the plan will revolutionize flying. “The new equipment is unbelievable what it does,” he said from the Oval Office. He began to say it may even alleviate the need for pilots before adding, “In my opinion, you always need pilots. But you wouldn’t even have to have pilots.”The newly revealed proposal appears to have wide support across the aviation industry from airline CEOs to the unions representing controllers and pilots but this is just the beginning and many details haven’t been revealed.Duffy quickly said the plan will not involve privatizing the air traffic control system, as Trump had supported in his first term.Following the midair crash near Washington, Trump promised to fix what he called “an old, broken system” and to tackle the nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers while blaming the previous Biden administration for both problems.But the weaknesses within the air traffic control system have been highlighted for years in hearings before Congress and government reports. The struggles to keep up with increasing air traffic has been recognized since the 1990s long before either Trump or Biden took office.The Trump administration’s overhaul plan will need enough funding to be more effective than previous reform efforts during the last three decades. Already more than $14 billion has been invested in upgrades since 2003 but none have dramatically changed how the system works.The FAA has been working since the mid-2000s to make upgrades through its NextGen program.One of the biggest challenges with a massive upgrade is that the FAA must keep the current system operating while developing a new system and then find a way to seamlessly switch over. That’s partly why the agency has pursued more gradual improvements in the past.The shortage of controllers and technical breakdowns came to the forefront in the last two weeks when a radar system briefly failed at the Newark, New Jersey, airport, leading to a wave of flight cancellations and delays.Without the planned upgrades, those breakdowns will be repeated around the nation, Duffy said. “Newark has been a prime example of what happens when this old equipment goes down,” he said. Associated Press reporter Will Weissert in Washington contributed. Josh Funk and John Seewer, Associated Press
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