00:00It has absolutely been bogged down, and American companies have been very much on tenderhooks,
00:04wondering which way things are going to go.
00:07What I think is interesting is after Korea, the Chinese government has already tried to start out,
00:12send out signals that we welcome American business and we want you to be here.
00:17I mean, case in point, we're at their giant, you know, import expo.
00:21We have more American companies here than at probably any other trade show in the world.
00:26And last night, the Chinese premier comes, and who does he visit?
00:30He visits three American medical companies, sending a really strong message that,
00:34hey, we value you and we value your investment.
00:36So the Chinese side is trying to reassure American business.
00:39But American business, while they see the deal that happened in Korea as the best possible outcome,
00:45there's a question about, is it going to last?
00:47Right. How long will it last?
00:48Well, we've seen this movie before, right?
00:50Two days after Geneva. Geneva lasted 48 hours before it melted down.
00:54And I think Madrid lasted about 10 days before we started to have real problems.
00:58And so while there's hope that this time it'll continue, there's still going to be a lot of guarded,
01:03cautious optimism, at least until April.
01:06Not asking you to take a political position here, but do you think in Washington,
01:10they underestimated China's position and levers of strength that they could possibly employ going into this trade war?
01:18I think there were two problems.
01:19I think one problem is I think the United States may have overestimated its leverage and how worried China would be about U.S. tariffs.
01:27And I think they underestimated China's counter leverage.
01:30Right.
01:31But at the same time, both sides have the ability to do enormous damage to the other economy through export controls and other measures.
01:37And I do think that both sides have sort of looked over the abyss and said maybe that's not where we want to go.
01:42And so both sides have realized, yeah, now's the time we can pull back.
01:46The question is, can we stay pulled back or are we going to get into another escalatory spiral?
01:51What are you seeing internally in America against the backdrop of these national policies?
01:57Are you tangibly seeing regional blocs looking for their avenues into China?
02:03I'm not necessarily saying trade deals from the Pacific Northwest.
02:07Say, for example, Washington state officials are here.
02:09Oregon state officials are here.
02:11Look to what's happening in the Midwest with those soybean farmers maybe feeling they're not getting their voice heard.
02:17Are you seeing sort of regional blocs talking to the Chinese officials,
02:21talking to the Chinese companies and trying to get some sort of favorable deals for themselves?
02:27OK, let's not name names, but I'm seeing some nervous governors.
02:30800,000 jobs depended on trade with China.
02:34And those jobs are starting to go away because U.S. exports to China and U.S. exports to other regions are going away because of high tariffs in the United States.
02:44And so I'm hearing about nervous governors who are asking us, how long is this going to go on and where is the light at the end of the tunnel?
02:49I'm hearing it from members of Congress on both sides.
02:52So I think that, yes, we're not at the point where I think we're seeing regional blocs,
02:56but I do think we're seeing governors starting to think about how can I continue and protect the jobs that we have that are tied to exports to China?
03:04Last question for you on the high tech.
03:06Obviously, Donald Trump was talking about possibly putting Blackwell chips on the table.
03:10I think maybe his more national security hawks in D.C. convinced him otherwise.
03:15But how do you see China's leverage increase tremendously through the deep seek moment and its confidence in AI to the point where they don't necessarily need that chip?
03:27I think you hit that on the nose.
03:29And that is, you know, my job was negotiating with China for a number of years when I was at the State Department.
03:34And you would get a long list of issues that were unresolved.
03:39And the issue wasn't, say, if we had 15 issues that were unresolved, the issue wasn't to resolve those 15 issues.
03:44The issue was to find the three they really cared about.
03:46The rest were bones that they would throw at us to chew on.
03:49I think that right now Chinese companies, they want access to chips.
03:54The Chinese government, yeah, not so much.
03:56And so I think this is one of the bones they've given us to chew on where, do I think it's good for the U.S. economy to sell more chips here?
04:03Absolutely.
04:03Do I think this is keeping China up at night, that they're not getting Blackwell chips?
04:07Yeah, probably not.
04:08And the most important thing is the way they talk about it.
04:11When I talk to Chinese businesses, entrepreneurs, academics, scholars, and most importantly, people in the government,
04:17and if you ask the question, you know, who's winning on AI, they give this look like, what does this mean?
04:23What is this winning of which you speak? And they don't see it in those terms.
04:27What they see is they see not a race to AGI.
04:31They see a race to deploy AI into every business, every school, and every sector of the economy.
04:37And what I see are companies, whether they're Chinese or foreign, racing and pushing AI out into every aspect of their business operation.
04:44And I think in the minds of the Chinese, that's the goal with AI, is to push it out and drive efficiency.
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