March 10 2025

China Slaps $22 Billion in Tariffs on U.S. Farm Goods, Targets Trump’s Rural Base

Palestinian Protest Leader at Columbia Arrested Despite Green Card

Utah Governor Signs Bill Banning Fluoride in Public Water

Loving: AI Infrastructure Boom Echoes 1990s Fiber Optic Build

Trump Pauses Intelligence Sharing with Ukraine, Zelensky Meets Saudi Prince

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1. China Slaps $22 Billion in Tariffs on U.S. Farm Goods, Targets Trump’s Rural Base

China has introduced retaliatory tariffs on about $22bn of US goods, including agricultural exports, targeting President Donald Trump’s rural base in the latest escalation in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies. Beijing’s measures, which were announced last week in response to Trump slapping an additional 10 per cent levy on all Chinese products, are aimed primarily at US farm goods. Soyabeans, one of the largest US exports to China and worth $12bn last year, were hit with an additional 10 per cent duty, as were pork, beef and seafood. Cotton, chicken and corn face added 15 per cent levies. Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura, said Beijing’s response was “relatively measured compared with the actions from the US”. He estimated that the hit to US farmers would be limited in the near term as it would take time for other countries to increase production of soyabeans and other agricultural products in volumes that could replace the US harvest. An economics professor in Beijing, who asked not to be named, said China’s response indicated restraint in an effort to preserve room for a negotiated solution. “The targeted agricultural products come from red states, which seems to be an attempt to put some political pressure on Trump,” he said.
Source: FT

2. Palestinian Protest Leader at Columbia Arrested Despite Green Card

A Palestinian protest leader at Columbia University was arrested by Department of Homeland Security agents Saturday night despite having a green card, his attorney said. President Donald Trump has promised to deport international students who participated in “pro-jihadist protests” on college campuses. Columbia was at the center of intense protests that broke out on campuses across the country last year over the Israel-Gaza war. The arrest came just one day after the Trump administration said it was canceling $400 million in federal contracts and grants to Columbia because university officials had not done enough to prevent antisemitism on campus. Mahmoud Khalil, who as a Palestinian graduate student was a leader in negotiations between protesters and Columbia officials last spring, was stopped by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who told him his student visa had been revoked, his attorney Amy E. Greer said in a written statement. When Khalil told agents that he was a lawful permanent resident, holding a green card, agents detained him anyway, she said.
Source: WaPo

3. Utah Governor Signs Bill Banning Fluoride in Public Water

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said he would sign a bill that bans the use of fluoride in public water systems, rejecting the practice that many public-health experts say is a crucial protector against tooth decay. The Republican governor said that half the state already doesn’t have fluoride added to the water and that dentists he had spoken to said there haven’t been dramatic differences between the different counties. “It’s got to be a really high bar for me if we’re going to require people to be medicated by their government,” said Cox on ABC4 Utah. The Utah law is set to take effect in early May. It will be the first state with such a ban.
Source: WSJ

4. Loving: AI Infrastructure Boom Echoes 1990s Fiber Optic Build

Silicon Valley's massive AI infrastructure buildout mirrors the 1990s fiber optic boom in scale and ambition, but with a crucial lesson worth remembering: the internet did fundamentally transform our world, just not at the breakneck pace its early investors anticipated. Today's tech giants are pouring unprecedented capital into AI data centers and specialized chips, with Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft on track to spend a staggering $320 billion in 2025 alone. This investment echoes the 1990s when telecom companies installed over 80 million miles of fiber based on ambitious internet traffic forecasts. While 85% of that fiber initially sat dark after the dot-com crash, that same infrastructure ultimately enabled the digital revolution we now take for granted.

The dot-com bust severely weakened telecom companies that built the internet's backbone – WorldCom, Global Crossing, and countless others collapsed under massive debt after bandwidth prices plummeted by 90%. However, that same cheap bandwidth became the foundation for the next generation of tech behemoths. YouTube, Google, Facebook and cloud computing all flourished because data transmission had become "very close to a free good." Today's AI infrastructure investments likely follow the same pattern – expensive for builders now, but ultimately providing the affordable computational foundation future innovators will require. Just as streaming video services would have been prohibitively expensive without the fiber glut, tomorrow's AI applications will need today's computational capacity to become economically viable. History suggests that technological revolutions require overbuilding infrastructure first – those who pay for construction rarely capture the full value, but society ultimately benefits from their ambition. AI will indeed transform our world – but its most profound impacts will emerge gradually as its infrastructure becomes a commodity.
Source: Greg Loving, citizen journal

5. Trump Pauses Intelligence Sharing with Ukraine, Zelensky Meets Saudi Prince

A. President Trump has ordered a pause to intelligence sharing with Ukraine, said Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, a move that deprives Kyiv of a key tool in fighting Russian forces. The U.S. suspended weapons shipments to Ukraine earlier this week after a contentious Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday unraveled plans to sign a minerals deal as a first step in bringing Ukraine and Russia to peace talks. Ratcliffe, appearing Wednesday on the Fox Business program “Mornings with Maria,” said Trump, after that meeting, had also “asked for a pause” of intelligence sharing. The U.S. has shared intelligence with Kyiv since the early months of the war, allowing Ukrainian forces to target Russian forces more effectively. The effect of suspending intelligence sharing is immediate and is likely pushing Ukraine to negotiations more quickly than the pause in weapons shipments, U.S. officials said. Ukraine has enough weapons to keep fighting for weeks, even if the U.S. stops shipments. While Ukraine produces and purchases its own drones, which provide battlefield visibility, it depends on U.S. military and signals intelligence, along with other data, to conduct operations.

B. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, working to repair his strained relationship with the United States and secure a favorable deal to end his country’s war with Russia, was scheduled to meet on Monday with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. The meeting between Mr. Zelensky and Prince Mohammed, the de facto Saudi leader, who has sought to take a central role on the world’s diplomatic stage, comes ahead of talks planned for Tuesday between Ukrainian and U.S. officials in the oil-rich Gulf state.

Source: WSJ (A), NYT (B)

March 10, 1876: First speech transmitted by telephone

The first discernible speech is transmitted over a telephone system when inventor Alexander Graham Bell summons his assistant in another room by saying, “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.”

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Sources

1. FT: https://www.ft.com/content/da80beaf-d916-4125-a9bc-040a1f15942e
2. WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/03/09/columbia-arrest-mahmoud-khalil/
3. WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/utah-fluoride-public-water-ban-346da342?mod=hp_lead_pos10
4. Greg Loving, citizen journal
5. WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/world/trump-suspends-intelligence-sharing-with-ukraine-147c7f2c?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1
   NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/us/politics/zelensky-saudi-arabia-prince-ukraine-meeting.html