{"id":170003,"date":"2025-10-30T16:07:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T16:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/live-updates-trump-xi-jinping-meet-over-tariffs-rare-earths-as-government-shutdown-continues-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T16:07:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T16:07:11","slug":"live-updates-trump-xi-jinping-meet-over-tariffs-rare-earths-as-government-shutdown-continues-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/live-updates-trump-xi-jinping-meet-over-tariffs-rare-earths-as-government-shutdown-continues-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Live updates: Trump, Xi Jinping meet over tariffs, rare earths as government shutdown continues – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump announced reductions in tariffs on Chinese goods and said China would drop restrictions on rare earth minerals for a year, likely with routine extensions.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., called his Democratic colleagues\u2019 attempt to bring up legislation to extend Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits yesterday a \u201ccynical political ploy\u201d in remarks on the chamber floor this morning as the shutdown goes into its 30th day.
\u201cDemocrats are outraged \u2014 outraged that they are coming face to face with the consequences of their decision to shut down the government,\u201d Thune said. \u201cThey\u2019re flailing around, blaming President Trump for not stepping in to somehow save the SNAP program from running out of money to pay benefits.\u201d
Thune said there is a limit to what Trump can do to alleviate the affects of the shutdown, and specifically the impact on food assistance programs. But Democrats have argued that the Trump administration should release $5 billion in contingency funding to allow the SNAP benefits to continue past this weekend, when funds are expected to run out.
\u201cPresident Trump did step in to save Democrats from themselves on WIC,” Thune said, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. “He somehow managed to find money to cover the program for the time being. But there is a limit to what he can do.\u201d
He called Democrat messaging that Republicans are responsible for the shutdown \u201cludicrous,\u201d placing blame on Democrats for demanding that expiring Obamacare subsides be included in any short-term spending measure, as opposed to the GOP-favored weeks-long extension of government funding at current levels.
In remarks at what has become a daily news conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., insisted this morning that there was \u201cno such legal avenue” to access contingency funding for SNAP because the program’s statutory language did not allow for such actions by Trump, unlike the WIC program, which he said was linked to a 1930s-era law related to tariff funds.
Johnson also rejected the idea of passing measures to fund parts of the government, saying the \u201crifle shot bills that you keep hearing about deviates from the goal.\u201d\u00a0
Congress has \u201cone singular purpose, and that is to reopen and fund the entire government.\u201d\u00a0
\u201cThe simplest way to end the pain, and the simplest way to make this stop is for the Democrats to do the obvious and right thing and vote for the non-partisan funding measure so that we can turn everything back on,\u201d he added.
The FBI says a proposal by House lawmakers to strip the bureau of its authority over counterintelligence efforts and hand it over to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would create confusion and undermine national security.
In a sharply worded letter to Congress, the FBI expressed its \u201cstrong objection\u201d to the proposal, exposing a power struggle between Gabbard and the FBI\u2019s director, Kash Patel, and other intelligence agencies.
\u201cThe FBI has consistently articulated its strong objection to the proposal, and believes it would cause serious and long-lasting damage to the US national security,\u201d said the unclassified letter.\u00a0\u201cFurthermore, the FBI is aware of many other objections submitted by other members of the IC,\u201d it stated, referring to the intelligence community.
The New York Times first reported<\/a> on the letter.
The FBI argued that it has developed decades of experience in countering foreign espionage in the U.S. with a national network of 53 field offices, and that the proposal would create unnecessary bureaucracy and shift authority to officials without relevant expertise.
\u201cThe cumulative effect would be putting decision-making with employees who aren\u2019t actively involved in Cl (counterintelligence) operations, knowledgeable of the intricacies of Cl threats, or positioned to develop coherent and tailored mitigation strategies,\u201d it said.
The clash over the FBI\u2019s leading role in counterintelligence marks the latest case of tensions between Gabbard and her counterparts in government, with the intelligence chief seeking a larger profile for her office.\u00a0
Gabbard has engaged in\u00a0turf battles\u00a0<\/a>with the CIA, blindsiding the spy agency by revoking security clearances for current and former national security employees without consulting with CIA officials, NBC News has reported. Gabbard\u2019s office has denied that the ODNI failed to properly confer with colleagues at the CIA over the security clearances.\u00a0
CIA and other intelligence officials share many of the FBI\u2019s misgivings about the House proposal, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
\u201cThe ODNI and the FBI are united in working with Congress to strengthen our nation\u2019s counterintelligence efforts to best protect the safety, security, and freedom of the American people,\u201d the two agencies said in an email.
The U.S. government\u00a0defines<\/a>\u00a0counterintelligence as protecting against leaks from U.S. spy agencies, hunting down foreign spies and countering economic espionage.
In its letter, the FBI refers to a draft letter from Gabbard about the House proposal, saying it \u201cvigorously disagrees\u201d with the director of national intelligence\u2019s position. NBC News has not seen the letter from Gabbard cited by the FBI.
The FBI\u2019s letter came as lawmakers in the House and Senate are haggling over an intelligence policy bill. The Senate\u2019s proposal does not call for shifting counterintelligence authority to Gabbard\u2019s office, congressional aides said.
The House bill would grant the director of national intelligence the authority to approve counterintelligence activities, but it does not define precisely what that could mean, the FBI said in its letter.
\u201cWould a counterintelligence related prosecution be considered an \u2018activity\u2019 that must receive approval from this new Director, outside of the current DOJ (Department of Justice) chain? Would that give the new Director of the Counterintelligence Center authority over the FBI\/Attorney General for all counterintelligence investigations?\u201d the letter stated.
\u201cThis entire provision will ultimately cause confusion among agencies and will not yield whatever intended benefits are sought,\u201d it said.\u00a0
Sen. Mark Warner, of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was open to a review of how counterintelligence activities are managed but opposed dismantling the FBI\u2019s leading role and giving the ODNI operational control.
\u201cThat\u2019s not what ODNI was created for, and it puts it in direct tension with the agencies it\u2019s supposed to support. This approach risks creating turf battles and undermining the effectiveness of our Intelligence Community. ODNI should be a force multiplier, not a competing agency,\u201d Warner said in an email.\u00a0
The chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas,\u00a0last month praised the House intelligence policy bill that would empower Gabbard as \u201cthe first major reform Congress has pursued of our nation\u2019s counterintelligence posture in over two decades,\u201d which he said was long overdue.
“While our adversaries in the Chinese Communist Party, Russia, Iran and terrorist groups operate on a war footing against the United States, too often we have remained reactive, complacent and risk-averse,\u201d Crawford\u00a0said<\/a>.
Crawford\u2019s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The director of national intelligence position was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in an attempt to improve coordination and information sharing among the country\u2019s spy agencies.
Just days before federal SNAP funding is set to lapse, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency, saying she’ll direct $65 million in state funds for emergency food assistance.
\u201cUnlike Washington Republicans, I won\u2019t sit idly by as families struggle to put food on the table. Today, I\u2019m declaring a state of emergency and am committing additional state funds for emergency food assistance to ensure New Yorkers don\u2019t go hungry. Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have the power to stop this crisis \u2014 millions of families depend on it,” Hochul said in a statement.
JD Vance will host a roundtable at the White House this afternoon on how the government shutdown is affecting aviation and airports around the country, a White House official said.\u00a0
The vice president will be joined by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Airlines for America CEO and former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and other industry leaders, the official said.\u00a0\u00a0
\u201cThe aviation industry has been gravely impacted by the Democrat Shutdown,\u201d the White House official said. \u201cAir traffic controllers did not receive a paycheck this week. Many pilot and aviation unions have called on Senate Democrats to open the government and pass the clean CR,\u201d referring to the House-passed short-term government spending bill backed by Republicans.
Air traffic controllers\u00a0and other federal workers deemed essential employees received their first zero-dollar paycheck<\/a> earlier this week, and some took to handing leaflets out at airports to bring attention to the impact the shutdown is having on aviation workers.
About 27,000 commercial flights carry 2.7 million passengers per day into and out of the U.S.
Behind a large glass wall, a worker in full protective gear watches as hundreds of tiny glass bottles whizz by every minute, sterilized, filled and packaged by a ballet of robotic arms.
Inside each ampule is the substance at the heart of the geopolitical strife between the United States and China: fentanyl, the deadly opioid that was at the top of the agenda at today\u2019s meeting between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
NBC News got exclusive access to the headquarters of Yichang Humanwell Pharmaceutical, the largest producer of the drug in China, and indeed Asia, at its sprawling complex in the central city of Yichang.
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
Radio Free Asia announced yesterday that it was pausing delivering news “for the first time in our history” because of “uncertain funding.”
Executive editor Rosa Hwang announced the move on the news outlet’s website<\/a>, calling it \u201can excruciating moment.\u201d
\u201cAnd make no mistake, authoritarian regimes are already\u00a0celebrating RFA\u2019s potential demise,\u201d Hwang said.
The announcement, near the end of Trump’s Asia trip, came after the U.S. Agency for Global Media, led by Kari Lake, moved over the summer to slash jobs <\/a>at government-funded outlets, which include Radio Free Asia, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty, amid the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the size of the federal government.
“When the initial\u00a0funding disruption\u00a0earlier this year forced RFA to furlough the majority of our editorial staff, the handful of journalists who remained launched\u00a0RFA Perspectives, determined to fulfill RFA\u2019s congressionally mandated mission to provide uncensored, accurate news and information in regions across Asia\u00a0hostile to a free press,” Hwang said. “That program, too, will end.”
Allowing China to buy Nvidia\u2019s latest-generation chips, even a modified version, could drastically reduce the United States\u2019 AI advantage, analysts say, as the American artificial intelligence government lobbies the U.S. government to expand its export control permits to also include the upcoming B30A chip.
\u201cMinimizing the export of powerful AI chips to China is the best way to maximize the United States\u2019 AI compute advantage in the short term,\u201d said analysts<\/a> at the Institute for Progress, a Washington-based think tank.
The U.S. currently allows limited exports of Nvidia\u2019s H20 GPU chips, the semiconductors at the heart of AI infrastructure buildout across the world. That chip was already a less powerful, last-generation version that was specially designed for the Chinese market.
Nvidia has, however, lobbied the Trump administration to now allow the export of B30A, built on the latest Blackwell architecture and a cheaper and less powerful version of the B300. The company argues that it would rather be a U.S. player that is dominant in the Chinese market than allow domestic players in China to catch up.
But even at that reduced performance, analysts at IFP say, the new chip is roughly \u201c12 to 17 times the computing power of H20.\u201d
\u201cIn the most aggressive export scenarios involving sales of the B30A chip and comparable AI chips from all other US AI chip companies, this advantage would flip, with China gaining a 1.1x advantage over the United States,\u201d they wrote.
The Senate confirmation hearing for Trump\u2019s pick for surgeon general, Dr. Casey Means, has been postponed after she went into labor, a spokesperson for the Senate committee set to consider her nomination said.
Means was supposed to appear virtually before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this morning for lawmakers to consider her nomination for the top health role.
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
Even though Trump says \u201call of the rare earth has been settled,\u201d analysts say the U.S. remains overly reliant on China for strategically crucial rare earth materials and that it will take years to address that.
\u201cBuilding new mines and, especially, expanding processing capacity \u2014 which is the real bottleneck \u2014 requires years of sustained effort and substantial investment,\u201d Patrik Andersson, an analyst at the Swedish National China Centre at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, told NBC News.
Mining the minerals and their processing is a highly specialized and environmentally toxic process \u2014 one that China has honed over decades, resulting in a near monopoly on the global supply.
There is also the matter of ensuring there is enough demand to counter China\u2019s overcapacities, said John Seaman, a research fellow at the French Institute of International Relations. \u201cWe\u2019ll need to see more coherent industrial policies and greater policy coordination across jurisdictions,\u201d he said.
Trump has responded to criticism by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer that his Asia trip was a \u201ctotal dud,\u201d calling it \u201calmost treasonous.\u201d
<\/span>Chuck Schumer called Trump's Asia trip a 'dud.'<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Brendan SmialowskiMIALOWSKI \/ AFP – Getty Images<\/span>
\u201cPresident Trump is about to congratulate himself, patting himself hard on the back, for cleaning up a mess that he created,\u201d Schumer said on the Senate floor yesterday, referring to trade talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping<\/a>.
Rather than using his visit to Malaysia, Japan and South Korea to \u201cmake progress with America\u2019s vital trading partners,\u201d Schumer said, Trump\u2019s trip \u201chas been a total dud.\u201d
In a Truth Social post<\/a>, Trump said he \u201cWorked really hard, 24\/7, took in Trillions of Dollars, and Chuck Schumer said trip was \u2018a total dud,\u2019 even though he knows it was a spectacular success. Words like that are almost treasonous!!!\u201d
Trump<\/a>\u00a0said yesterday that he had instructed\u00a0the Defense Department<\/a>\u00a0to \u201cimmediately\u201d start testing nuclear weapons \u201con an equal basis\u201d with other nations.
\u201cBecause of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,\u201d Trump\u00a0said on Truth Social<\/a>\u00a0shortly before his highly anticipated meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea. \u201cThat process will begin immediately.\u201d
The last confirmed nuclear test by the United States was in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush announced a moratorium on underground nuclear testing. The United States has the ability to resume tests at a federal site in Nevada.
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
From\u00a0fentanyl\u00a0to\u00a0rare earths, Trump\u2019s highly anticipated meeting with Chinese leader\u00a0Xi Jinping\u00a0on the last leg of his three-country\u00a0Asia\u00a0tour saw the world\u2019s two biggest economies ease their trade tensions, or at least some of them.
\u201cA lot of finalization,\u201d Trump told reporters on Air Force One after departing Busan,\u00a0South Korea, where he met with Xi today for about an hour and 40 minutes, saying he would rate the \u201camazing\u201d meeting a \u201c12\u201d on a scale from zero to 10.
While the two leaders did not ink a finalized agreement, Trump said a deal could be signed \u201cpretty soon\u201d and that there were \u201cnot too many major stumbling blocks.\u201d
Trump said that he would visit China in April, and that Xi would visit either Florida or Washington \u201csome time after that.\u201d
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
Trump said after meeting with Chinese President\u00a0Xi Jinping\u00a0that he was lowering tariffs in exchange for a\u00a0crackdown on fentanyl\u00a0and that he would visit\u00a0China\u00a0in April.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on his way back to Washington, Trump said he would reduce his fentanyl tariff on China to 10% from 20%, effective immediately, after Xi agreed to intensify China\u2019s efforts to stem the illicit international flow of precursor chemicals for the deadly opioid.
He said his meeting with Xi was \u201camazing,\u201d rating it a \u201c12\u201d on a scale of one to 10, and said that with few major obstacles remaining, a sweeping trade deal would soon be ready.
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
NBC News<\/p>\n

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Trump announced reductions in tariffs on Chinese goods and said China would drop restrictions on rare earth minerals for a year, likely with routine extensions.Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., called his Democratic colleagues\u2019 attempt to bring up legislation to extend Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits yesterday a \u201ccynical political ploy\u201d in remarks on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":170004,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}