Leaders around the world have responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s new tariffs that threaten to disrupt the global economy with criticism. However, Chinese state media have taken a different approach in their response. A music video titled “Look What You Taxed Us Through (An AI-Generated Song. A Life-Choking Reality)” was published by the Chinese state news network CGTN. The video portrays Trump as a figure responsible for killing affordable Chinese cars and highlights the negative impact of tariffs on American consumers.
CGTN also captioned the video on its website, stating that the video is AI-generated and emphasizing the human-made debt crisis. The song’s lyrics, displayed in English and Chinese, rebuke Trump’s tariffs from the perspective of American consumers. The video ends with quotes from reports criticizing Trump’s tariffs.
Experts have warned that American consumers will bear the costs of Trump’s tariffs, which are taxes on imports, and U.S. recession indicators have risen since the White House’s reciprocal tariff rollout. Global markets have also been shocked by these developments.
In response, New China TV, the English-language social-media-focused brand of China’s official state news service Xinhua, published a sci-fi short called “T.A.R.I.F.F.” The short follows a robot named Technical Artificial Robot for International Fiscal Functions and its psychological journey towards self-destruction. The film criticizes the weaponization of tariffs by the United States.
China’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs also posted a video on social media, featuring a mix of AI-generated images and real ones, questioning the kind of world people want to live in. The video asks viewers to choose between an imperfect world with greed and tariffs, and an alternative utopia with shared prosperity and global solidarity.
While China has been vocal about its displeasure with Trump’s tariffs, which began targeting China in his first term, Beijing has implemented countermeasures and vowed to continue as long as the trade war persists.
Source: https://time.com/7274777/china-trump-tariffs-ai-music-video-short-film-state-media-artificial-intelligence/
