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Chinese State Media Rebuke Trump’s Tariffs With AI Song and Videos
Chinese state media shared a music video and sci-fi short film rebuking U.S. tariffs.
Leaders around the world have responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s shocking new tariffs that threaten to upend the global economy with stern words and denunciations. But Chinese state media have offered a different approach.
“‘Liberation Day,’ you promised us the stars,” sings a female-sounding voice over images of Trump. “But tariffs killed our cheap Chinese cars.”
A 2-minute, 42-second music video—titled “Look What You Taxed Us Through (An AI-Generated Song. A Life-Choking Reality)”—was published on April 3 by the Chinese state news network CGTN.
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“For many Americans, ‘Liberation Day’ hailed by Trump administration will mean shrinking paychecks and rising costs. Tariffs hit, wallets quit: low-income families take the hardest blow. As the market holds its breath, the toll is already undeniable. Numbers don’t lie. Neither does the cost of this so-called ‘fairness,’” CGTN captioned the video on its website. “Warning: Track is AI-generated. The debt crisis? 100 percent human-made.”
The lyrics, displayed in English and Chinese, appear to rebuke Trump’s tariffs from the point of view of the American consumer, and it’s addressed directly to the U.S. President. “Groceries cost a kidney, gas a lung. Your ‘deals’? Just hot air from your tongue,” the opening verse continues. “Thanks for the tariffs, and the mess you made,” the song ends, before the music video displays quotes from reports by the Yale Budget Lab and the Economist lambasting Trump’s tariffs.
Experts have warned that American consumers will bear much of the costs of Trump’s tariffs, which are taxes on imports, and U.S. recession indicators have risen since the White House’s April 2 “reciprocal” tariff rollout. At the same time, global markets have been shocked at a level not seen since the pandemic.
CGTN isn’t the only state media outlet to use AI to slam Trump’s trade policy. New China TV, the English-language social-media-focused brand of China’s official state news service Xinhua, also published on April 3 a three-minute, 18-second sci-fi short called “T.A.R.I.F.F.”
