00:00Turning now to one of our top stories, President Trump says Xi Jinping will come to the White
00:03House towards the end of the year, and that's after they spoke by phone in what Trump calls
00:08a long, thorough, and excellent discussion. He spoke with embassy news anchor Tom Lamas.
00:14What did you talk about with the leader of China?
00:17We talked about a lot of topics. We talked about so much.
00:18What's the most important topic? Is it chips? Is it the wars in Ukraine? What is going on?
00:23I would say the economy, the relationship that we have with China. I'm going to be going there
00:28in April, then he's coming here toward the end of the year.
00:31Coming to the White House?
00:32He's coming to the White House, yeah, toward the end of the year. We have a very good relationship.
00:37And you know, it's important that I have a good relationship, and for him, that he has
00:41a good relationship with me. We have to have a good... These are the two most powerful countries
00:45in the world.
00:48Let's bring in Min Min Lo now, our China correspondent, on. We've gotten the readouts from both sides
00:53here. Overall, how do they differ? What's the same? How are they aligned?
00:57Yeah, I would say just judging from that interview alone, it sounds like President Trump has confirmed
01:02that Xi is going to come to visit the White House before the end of the year, which to
01:08me sounds like a stabilisation of relations, right? This is the standard playbook for a
01:12functional relationship. He goes to visit China, and then China, he returns the favour, and
01:17President Xi comes to visit. So in terms of the readout from both sides, Trump posted on
01:22true social, a very positive tone there. He says that his personal relationship with
01:26presidency is, quote, extremely good. He talked about a range of issues, everything from
01:31geopolitics, Taiwan, Iran, Ukraine, to trade, right? Just now in the interview, he mentioned
01:37the economy is the number one issue for the U.S., and those agricultural pledges from China
01:42came through. 20 million tonnes of soybean purchases this harvest, and 25 million for the next harvest,
01:48they discussed oil and gas purchases as well. But when it comes to China, the readout didn't mention
01:54any of these issues except Taiwan. That was specifically mentioned as the number one, the most
02:00important issue in U.S.-China relations, and saying that China will never allow Taiwan to be separated
02:06from China, and warning the U.S. that they need to exercise a lot of caution, especially when it comes
02:11to arms sales to Taiwan. Yeah, and I guess that's the real red line for Beijing. What else happened for
02:17President Xi? Because, of course, he had another call, but this one was with President Putin instead.
02:22Yeah, just hours ago, he had a one and a half hour long video call. I mean, I don't even have that long a call
02:28with my best friends, but yeah, clearly very close friends talking for an hour and a half video call. And again,
02:35if you look at the readouts, a very short one, but it really shows you that the two sides are presenting
02:40this very united front, right, at a time when there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of turbulence
02:44in global markets. There is, you know, the Iran crisis going on. And of course, Russia and China
02:51are both aligned in seeing Iran as this linchpin in the Middle East to counterbalance against the U.S.
02:56So no surprise that they also had a very long call just ahead of that call with President Trump to
03:01align their stance on how to deal with the U.S. and China also committing to continue to
03:06open up its economy to Russia as well.
Comments