A front-page article in Springfield, Illinois's State Journal-Register by the Associated Press says President Trump proposes "huge" tariffs on China.

There's one problem: nowhere in the article does it say what the actual dollar amount of the tariffs will be.

The AP writes:

Primed for economic combat, President Donald Trump set in motion tariffs on as much as $60 billion in Chinese imports to the U.S. on Thursday and accused the Chinese of high-tech thievery, picking a fight that could push the global heavyweights into a trade war.

China threatened retaliation, and Wall Street cringed, recording one of the biggest drops of Trump's presidency. But he declared the U.S. would emerge "much stronger, much richer."

It was the boldest example to date of Trump's "America first" agenda, the culmination of his longstanding view that weak U.S. trade policies and enforcement have hollowed out the nation's workforce and ballooned the federal deficit.

It says that the tariffs will be on $60 billion's worth of products, suggesting a big shakedown, but the actual tariffs collected...well, what will they be?  Will they be $3 billion, or $10 billion?  It's relevant because the AP calls them "huge."  We are never told these figures, so we don't know why the AP calls them huge.  Even if the tariffs were 100% to cover $60 billion in goods, that would be three tenths of a percent of our $20-trillion economy, so the actual tariffs would not amount to much by power of comparison.

From what I have heard, most of the tariffs Trump is proposing are mirror tariffs, which means if China imposes tariffs on U.S. companies, we impose them back.  Isn't that fair?

China has been stealing our technology and intellectual property for decades, so isn't it about time we had a president who holds the Chinese to account instead of always appeasing them because they may retaliate?  Previous administrations have relinquished increasing amounts of manufacturing to China, and that makes the Chinese more dangerous to us, not less.

Also, China's leader, Xi Jinping, now has a lifetime position, and that makes the Chinese even more dangerous.  We should not continue to turn a blind eye to what he does.

This AP piece is entirely too dependent on a particular opinion.

Another article by the AP, talking about newly appointed national security adviser John Bolton, calls him the most divisive foreign policy expert.

The news agency writes:

Bolton, probably the most divisive foreign policy expert ever to serve as U.N. ambassador, has been a force in Republican foreign policy circles for decades.  He served in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and as a Bush lawyer during the 2000 Florida recount.

What is that opinion doing in a supposed news piece?  The AP authors of that article should put that comment on an opinion page, not a news page.  I personally believe that President Obama's United Nations ambassador, Samantha Power, was much more divisive by supporting Obama's, Hillary Clinton's, and John Kerry's lead-from-behind foreign policies.  Those policies left the world weaker, especially against North Korea.

It is a shame that a majority of supposed news articles are actually opinion pieces.