China compartirá rocas lunares raras con Estados Unidos

 China permitirá a científicos de seis países, incluido Estados Unidos, examinar rocas raras traídas de la Luna. China ha ampliado su cooperación científica con Estados Unidos en un momento en que la guerra comercial entre las dos economías más poderosas ha alcanzado su punto álgido.

En 2020, la nave espacial china Chang'e-5 trajo algunas rocas de la superficie lunar. El jueves, la Administración Nacional Espacial de China (CNSA) dijo que había dado permiso a dos instituciones estadounidenses financiadas por la agencia espacial estadounidense NASA para examinar la roca.

Según un informe de los medios locales, el jefe de la CNSA, Shan Zhongda, dijo que la muestra de roca es un tesoro que vale la pena compartir entre la humanidad.

Aunque la CNSA permite a los científicos estadounidenses ver muestras lunares recolectadas por la NASA, los científicos chinos no pueden verlas. Los legisladores estadounidenses han impuesto restricciones a la cooperación científica de la NASA con China.

Según la ley de 2011, la NASA no puede establecer ningún tipo de relación de cooperación con China ni con ninguna empresa china; Para hacer algo así, debe obtener un permiso especial del Congreso.

Al respecto, John Logsdon, ex director del Instituto de Política Espacial de la Universidad George Washington, dijo a la BBC que la política tuvo muy poco que ver con el último intercambio de rocas lunares. No tiene importancia militar. Lo ideal es que haya cooperación internacional en materia científica.

El presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, ha impuesto un arancel máximo del 145 por ciento a los productos chinos desde que asumió el cargo para su segundo mandato. En respuesta, China impuso un arancel del 125 por ciento a los productos estadounidenses.

Trump ‘has the ball’

Trump has argued with some justification that expanded trade with China has built a superpower foe that US leaders in both parties now regard as the premier threat to US national security and global power. At the same time, however, cheap clothes and consumer goods such as iPhones have massively improved the material circumstances of millions of Americans, even as globalization has hollowed out US manufacturing heartlands and left a trail of social blight.

Despite the rising tensions and more nervousness to come on the stock markets this week, Trump’s aides on Sunday defended the president’s approach, which risks tipping into recession an economy that was humming along when he took office less than three months ago.

“This is unfolding exactly like we thought it would in a dominant scenario,” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He added: “We’ve got 90 deals in 90 days possibly pending here.”

That kind of success rate in negotiating trade deals, which normally take years to clinch, would be remarkable — one reason why many analysts don’t take the administration’s bombast about offers from foreign nations at face value. The possibility remains that countries such as Japan, India and South Korea, as well as the European Union, will offer Trump splashy concessions he can claim as a big win while they do not fundamentally change bilateral trading relationships.

That would mean one of Trump’s core justifications for the tariff war — remaking American manufacturing — would not be achieved. Cosmetic wins for Trump would also fail to justify the trillions of dollars his actions have wiped off global stock markets and the losses he’s inflicted on millions of Americans’ retirement accounts.

There are growing signs that the president’s chaotic economic management is depressing his political standing in a way that will be particularly sensitive for Republican lawmakers in the year before the midterm elections.

A new CBS poll Sunday showed that the president’s approval ratings over his handling of the economy and inflation have dipped. Some 44% of respondents approve and 56% disapprove of his performance on the economy, while only 40% approve and 60% disapprove on his handling of inflation. And 75% expect at least short-term price spikes due to tariffs, while 48% expect long-term increases.

These are shaky numbers considering that the real impact of tariffs is yet to be felt by consumers in terms of rising prices. And Trump’s bet is particularly hazardous given that his promise to lower the costs of food and housing was at the center of his win over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris last November.

Despite the tense times, one of Trump’s loudest boosters in the Cabinet, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, remains bombastic.

“Donald Trump has the ball. I want him to have it. He’s the right person with it,” Lutnick said on ABC News’ “This Week.” “He knows how to play this game. He knows how to deal with President Xi. This is the right person for the right role, and I am confident this is going to work out with China.”

Yet the mystique of Trump as a master dealmaker, which has been more central to the president’s political appeal than anything else, has never faced a tougher test.

Confusion in the administration’s messaging

Confusion in the administration’s messaging

Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the closing session of the National People's Congress in Beijing on March 11, 2025. 

Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images/File

As it has several times, the administration is insisting that its sudden moves and inconsistent messaging were part of the plan all along.“This is just another great example of how President Trump had a detailed plan from the beginning that’s being executed exactly as directed,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” He explained the administration’s thinking that such items are vital to US national security and thus required different treatment for “reshoring” factories that make them.

The administration insists its strategy is working, arguing that scores of countries included in the now-paused reciprocal tariffs have rushed to offer stunning deals to Trump to escape American pressure.

The White House is now applying similar logic to China, betting that the might of the US economy will force Xi to offer concessions on long-held grievances that include concerns over market access, intellectual property theft and a vast trade imbalance that Trump insists is proof Beijing is ripping off Washington.

“It’s kind of almost a two-world system. There’s a process about China, and that’s very, very nascent … and then the process for everybody else,” Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “So the process for everybody else is orderly, it’s clear. People are coming to town with great, great offers.”

The Trump approach is risky, and it may fail to take into account the complexities of the US-China relationship and the political dynamics in Beijing. This is because Xi’s attempt to turn his country into a dominant great power is founded in a conceit that the US and other Western powers have historically adopted colonial-style policies to suppress Chinese influence and deprive it of its rightful place in the world. This makes it almost impossible for Xi to be seen as caving to what China regards as US bullying.

Still, the administration has dismissed warnings that China can hurt the US as badly as Washington can hurt it. “They’re playing with a pair of twos,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week on CNBC. He argued that since the US exports only a fifth of the total value of goods Beijing sends to the US, its economy would come off worse in a tit-for-tat trade war.

That reasoning and Trump’s confidence that his typical brinksmanship and raising of the stakes to intolerable levels, which he honed as a real estate mogul in New York, will be tested in the days to come.

If Trump does manage to reframe the US trading relationship with China, he will claim a significant achievement in a new era of Washington relations with Beijing. For years, presidents of both parties reasoned that by liberalizing China’s previously controlled economy, the US could usher its rival into the global rule-based trading system and promote political reforms inside the country. But that calculus began to change at the end of the Obama administration, and Xi’s nationalistic rule sharpened the economic and geopolitical showdown between the two sides.