00:00What's happening in the Middle East seems to now be affecting whether or not we'll be having the summit between
00:05the two presidents.
00:06What do we know about that?
00:07Well, on the poorly market, the bets are less than 50 percent that Trump is going to arrive by end
00:12of March.
00:13But yes, there has been a lot of speculation when the Iran war first broke out whether that summit will
00:17be derailed.
00:18And this is the first time we're hearing from President Trump that he might delay the summit.
00:22And the precondition here is that China contributes to keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and send warships to that
00:28area.
00:28But if you just read the state-linked media reports so far, China views the root cause of the conflict
00:35as the U.S. and Israel attacks on Iran.
00:39And they view this move by President Trump essentially as dragging other countries in a war that it started.
00:45And so far, China's stance on Iran has been no more than rhetorical support.
00:49And it's very unlikely, at least in the past, China has been quite unwilling to put boots on the ground
00:56and put military backing in a conflict that is far away from home.
01:00So it's not clear how willing they are to really accede to President Trump's request.
01:03But, you know, two weeks is a long time.
01:05And maybe there could be some sort of face-saving gesture in the lead-up to the summit.
01:09And potentially it could still happen. It's really hard to say at this point.
01:12Do you see China playing any role in this whole Iran situation?
01:15Well, I think the one thing that you have to keep in mind when it comes to China, too, is
01:18that, you know, what kind of leverage do they have in any kind of negotiations here, right?
01:22I mean, you can make the argument that after, you know, Trump's tariff regime was essentially struck on by the
01:29Supreme Court of the United States and that he's now pursuing some other options to kind of get tariffs in
01:34place.
01:34But China, which did kind of emerge as like a pretty significant victor in everything last year when all that
01:40chaos was flying around, might have, you know, a bit more leverage when it comes to actually getting, you know,
01:44Trump to, you know, to the table to talk about what they want, too.
01:47So I do think that that's part of this. But I think, you know, you know, as Min Min said,
01:52you know, there's a lot here that China might not necessarily want to get involved with or that isn't necessarily
01:56in their best interest.
01:56So you do have these pretty strong comments from Trump. But, you know, how powerful of leverage is it actually
02:01for Trump to say, you know, maybe I just won't go to Beijing?
02:03So I think that that's a pretty significant question here.
02:07Assuming the summit is still taking place. We had talks in Paris, high-level talks. What did we get out
02:12of that?
02:12Yeah, so the first day is over. There was on Sunday, six hours of talks. But neither side spoke to
02:18the media on the way in and out of the venue.
02:20Today, they're going to continue the talks again. But so far, Reuters has reported, based on sources, that the talks
02:27were candid and constructive.
02:28And it seems like China is showing some signs of goodwill, saying that they are open to buying more agricultural
02:34products beyond soybeans, including things like poultry, beef, non-soybean, row crops, for example.
02:40And they are still pledging to fulfil their commitment on that 25 million tonnes of soybeans per year over the
02:46next three years.
02:46We understand from the Reuters report that the U.S. is also pressing China to buy more U.S. oil
02:51and natural gas as well.
02:53So the U.S. clearly also emerging a winner in this Iran conflict, given they are the largest exporter of
02:58LNG globally.
03:00And there's also the Boeing deal on the table.
03:02And according to Reuters, both sides are looking at coming up with technical talks, a so-called board of investments
03:08and board of trade.
03:10And these two mechanisms will be talks that allow them to identify sectors and products where they can increase trade
03:16to balance that trade relationship.
03:18The board of investment would deal with discretionary investment issues.
03:22And we know that China so far has been very keen to put money in the U.S.
03:26But they have faced a lot of scrutiny from CFIUS.
03:28They have faced a lot of restrictions.
03:30So we'll see if this actually opens up space for both sides to mutually invest in each other's countries.
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