Write a short, clear, factual news headline based on this article:

Beijing said on Monday it has “lodged representations” and urged Washington to “correct its erroneous ways” after the US launched new trade probes last week, with negotiators from both countries meeting in Paris.

Washington’s trade investigations target 60 economies including China and will look into “failures to take action on forced labor” and whether these burden or restrict US commerce.

Those investigations came a day after a separate set of US probes centred on excess industrial capacity that target 16 trading partners including China, which Beijing’s foreign ministry criticised as “political manipulation”.

“We urge the US side to immediately correct its erroneous ways, meet China halfway… and resolve issues through dialogue and negotiations,” Beijing’s commerce ministry said in a statement.

Read moreChina calls on US to cancel Trump-era tariffs following Supreme Court ruling

The latest round of investigations “is extremely unilateral, arbitrary and discriminatory”, it said, accusing Washington of “attempting to construct trade barriers”.

Trade officials from both countries met in Paris on Sunday for talks that Washington has said would last for two days.

China has “lodged representations” with the US over the newest forced labour trade probes, the Chinese commerce ministry said.

Human rights groups and United Nations experts have voiced alarm over allegations of forced labour affecting minority groups in China’s western Xinjiang region, which Beijing has dismissed as “fabricated”.

The two sets of trade probes will likely take months, but could justify new tariffs after the US Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump‘s sweeping tariffs in February.

Washington has said Trump will visit China from March 31 to April 2, although Beijing has yet to confirm those dates.

Trump told the Financial Times in an interview that the summit could be postponed because of the Middle East war.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

But, inevitably, most of the focus likely to be on how Starmer responds to the latest provocations from Donald Trump.

To recap: last weekend Trump was dismissing the UK’s stance saying that the US did not need Britain’s support in the Gulf anyway because “we don’t need people that join wars after we’ve already won”. This weekend he was asking the UK, and other countries, to send warships to help keep the strait of Hormuz open. The government has indicated that it won’t deploy warships, but it may send minesweeping drones. Here are some of today’s headlines.

The full Guardian story is here.

After briefly sounding solicitous, Trump is now back in threat mode. In a brief interview with the Financial Times he implied that, if countries like the UK did not deploy warships to protect oil tankers going through the strait of Hormuz, he might pull the plug on Nato. He said:

It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the Strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there …

If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of Nato.

We will hear what Starmer has to say about this later, but we have already had a response from Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, who has been on the morning interview round. Speaking on Sky News, McFadden downplayed the threat, arguing that the US-UK alliance was strong enough to “outlast” any problems caused by Trump’s rhetoric. Asked to comment on the quote, he said:

That’s the president right there. The quote that you’ve just given has summed him up.

It’s a very transactional presidency and our job is to navigate this, to always remember that the friendship between the United States and the United Kingdom runs very deep.

It’s a good relationship. It’s enduring and I think it will outlast all the personalities involved.

We will cover the press conference in detail, but we won’t just be focusing on Iran today; there is other politics around too. Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Keir Starmer meets Mark Carney, the Canadian PM, in Downing Street.

10.30am: Starmer holds his press conference.

11am: Richard Tice, Reform UK’s deputy leader, holds a press conference where he will give what the party says will be “a significant update on Doge and Reform in local government”.

11.30am: Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, gives a speech where he will announce plans for a youth jobs grant and an apprenticeships incentive.

Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in London.

12.30pm: Malcolm Offord, Reform UK’s leader in Scotland, takes part in a Q&A at the Institute for Government.

1.30pm: Jeremy Corbyn, Your Party’s parliamentary leader, presents the findings of his Gaza Tribunal report. As Patrick Wintour reports, it will say the government has been complicit in crimes committed by Israel.

2.30pm: John Healey, the defence secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

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