00:00We start with the postponed Beijing summit between President Trump and President Xi,
00:04rescheduled because of a war in Iran that was supposed to be over by now.
00:08How much will it affect discussions between the two leaders, assuming that they happen as planned?
00:13Myron Brilliant is a senior counselor at the DGA Albright Group and recently returned from China.
00:20I think there's been a fair amount between the economic leaders, right?
00:25So Vice Premier He La Fong on the Chinese side and his counterpart here, Secretary Bessette and Ambassador Greer have
00:32had six or seven rounds of discussions.
00:35So I think on that side, they understand where the guardrails are, what can be done.
00:40There are some questions about how much can be done in areas like export controls.
00:44But I think the United States thinks they're going to get something on market access, more beef, more soybeans, maybe
00:51Boeing planes, something, progress in those kinds of areas.
00:55So I think that side of the equation is good.
00:58The side that is less clear is the political side.
01:00As you suggested, summits of this nature with this high expectations tend to take months to prepare.
01:07With the president and the administration distracted by the war in the Middle East,
01:11it's not had the same level of political connectivity between, say, Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his counterpart, Secretary of
01:19State Rubio.
01:20There is dialogue, but I'm not sure the infrastructure of the system has been as deep and broad as you
01:27would expect of a summit of this nature.
01:29If you think about the wish list from the two sides, you just mentioned some of the things the United
01:33States would like,
01:34selling more soybeans, for example, Boeing planes or things like that.
01:38But this is the first meeting of these two leaders since they really had sort of a trade dispute,
01:44particularly over things like critical minerals.
01:47Have they put it back together?
01:49Well, 25 was a tumultuous year in the U.S.-China relationship, right?
01:54There was the escalation on tariffs.
01:56And, of course, you know, I think China was more prepared.
01:59And they used their advantage.
02:01They leveraged the critical minerals, rare earth issue to their advantage.
02:05And they put some choke points on the United States, not just the United States, Japan as well.
02:10So 2025 was an unpredictable and complicated year.
02:152026 hasn't been made easier by the situation in Iran because that's another dynamic in the relationship.
02:20But both sides recognize that a global recession doesn't serve their interests.
02:25Both sides are trying to manage a further deterioration of the relationship.
02:29It's not because they want to be friends, but it's because each side recognizes that stability is in their self
02:35-interest.
02:35So that's what they're managing.
02:37They're trying to create a concrete list of deliverables.
02:41It's not going to be a home run of a visit.
02:43But even moving incrementally forward and having the optics of the two leaders meet, not just once, but possibly two
02:49or three times this year, that's progress in one sense.
02:52That creates some stability.
02:54But to me, it's not a ceiling.
02:55It's a floor.
02:57You mentioned that President Trump said he'd like to have several meetings this year.
03:01Does that reduce the likelihood that any one meeting will have a major breakthrough?
03:05Because the Chinese are thinking, wait a second, we've got more of these coming.
03:07Well, I was in Beijing, as you know, 10 days ago.
03:11And my sense is the Chinese are pretty confident.
03:13They think they've cracked the code on President Trump.
03:16They think they've got a playbook, and their playbook is not to appease the Trump administration like they did try
03:23in Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0.
03:26They're punching back.
03:28And we see a little bit of this on both sides, tit for tat.
03:31U.S. issues new regulations under the FCC.
03:34The Chinese issue new exit bans that affect supply chains on critical minerals.
03:39So each side is feeling each other out, so to speak.
03:42I think ultimately China will do enough to create some momentum out of this visit, but not so much that
03:51they deliver all that they can deliver in this first summit.
03:55They're going to test the market, meaning they're going to test whether they can count on Trump delivering.
04:02And that's pretty unpredictable right now.
04:05What's on the Chinese wish list?
04:06What do they want Trump to deliver?
04:08I think a couple of things, and I think they're going to be hard to get.
04:11One is they want guardrails around export controls.
04:14But, you know, from the administration officials I talk to, they don't want to go there.
04:19They view that as a national security imperative in the United States, not something to negotiate in the China-U
04:24.S. relationship.
04:25But that's clearly high on their list.
04:27Second, they want some kind of clarity on tariffs.
04:30There, there's a little bit of give and take.
04:32The administration seems to like this idea of a board of trade, which side gives up something on tariffs.
04:40We want to get something back in return, obviously, market access.
04:44But I think that is negotiable.
04:46The third thing is I think the administration has to watch out for is the Chinese want something on Taiwan.
04:52They'd love to see the president make some kind of statement around peaceful unification.
04:57We've had five decades where the United States has stayed the course on its policy on Taiwan.
05:04The Chinese think that dealing with the president of the United States, they might be able to get something done
05:09in Taiwan.
05:09I hope not.
05:10That would be a game changer.
05:12Is there any prospect that President Trump might ask for help from President Xi on Iran?
05:18I think that he'll lean in on that issue.
05:22But depending what you defer as help, I think he'll lean in in trying to get the Chinese to back
05:28off helping.
05:29But we know that China has already helped Iran on surveillance technology.
05:34We know that they've helped on drone technology.
05:37So China has leaned in a little bit, but China has to be careful.
05:40Their stakes in the Middle East are not as high as their stakes in the U.S.-China relationship.
05:46Stability between China and the United States is still a higher priority than coming to the aid of Iran.
05:51They know that.
05:52They do have 10 percent of their oil coming from Iran, but they have diversified in the energy space,
05:59not just on oil and gas suppliers, but also in solar and renewables.
06:04So, therefore, they're less reliant on Iran than they used to be, and that also factors into their equation.
06:10You know China well.
06:12You also know U.S. business well.
06:15For U.S. business people, leaders in this country, what should they be looking at in this summit?
06:21Well, you know, symbols matter.
06:23So let's see what happens with China and the United States at the summit.
06:28Do the leaders embrace some kind of pact?
06:30Do they provide a little bit more business certainty?
06:33Do they create space on both sides where there's not going to be this tit-for-tat retaliation?
06:40There's a lot of sensitivities.
06:41There's a lot of competition.
06:43I'm looking for symbols on AI, okay?
06:45We're going to compete intensely with China on AI, but we also have to think about the risk in the
06:52system,
06:52and China raised that.
06:54Government leader after government leader raised AI as, is this an opportunity?
06:58I think business would encourage that.
07:00Look, you know, during the height of the Soviet Union-U.S. Cold War, we had a hotline between Moscow
07:07and Washington.
07:08Should we create an AI hotline?
07:10Should we have red lines on AI?
07:12Should we create safety protocols?
07:14So this is the kind of things that I think would be stabilizing in the relationship.
07:18We're looking for that.
07:19We're obviously also looking for each side to pull back on some of the regulatory behavior that creates mischief in
07:26the relationship,
07:27that creates irritants and creates impediments.
07:30And we'll hope to see some of that come out of this summit.
07:33But the deliverables that we see at the summit are not going to be home runs.
07:38They're going to be singles.
07:39Singles matter.
07:40You get enough singles, you score runs.
07:41But I think we should be cautioned against having high expectations at the first summit.
07:48But it's still important to have.
07:50It was the Iran war that caused the delay in the summit.
07:55What we've seen over the past year and almost a half between the two countries has been this kind of
08:00tit-for-tat diplomacy around...
08:02But Elizabeth Economy, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution,
08:06thinks that that will not be the central issue for the leaders as they look for common ground.
08:10There is a summit scheduled between President Trump and President Xi in Beijing.
08:15First of all, will it happen?
08:17I think it's going to happen.
08:18I think we're in the midst of a ceasefire.
08:21I think the president is determined to hold the ceasefire in Iran in order to have the summit, if for
08:25no other reason.
08:26How much will Iran influence the agenda at the summit?
08:30I think the Iranian issue and the war in Iran is going to be a secondary issue.
08:36I think for Xi Jinping and for Donald Trump, this summit is really about finding a degree of stability in
08:42the relationship.
08:43I think that's really the issue on which both sides are aligned.
08:47And I think that's going to come in the trade and the investment realm.
08:50So I think Iran will be there, Russia, Ukraine will be there, but there'll be very much secondary issues.
08:56Do the Chinese trust President Trump?
08:58Because President Trump is known for being sort of unpredictable at times.
09:01Yes.
09:02I think that they trust that if he gets what he wants, that he will also give to them.
09:08And so I think they've spent a lot of time trying to understand what his priorities are and what he's
09:14prepared to give in return.
09:15Of course, they were very pleasantly surprised by the president's decision to allow the export of H-200s last summer.
09:23That was a big win for the Chinese.
09:25So I think they're looking similarly for some new technologies to be lifted out of the export control bucket.
09:33I think they'd like to see a reduction in the tariffs.
09:35Basically, they want to be treated as a normal power.
09:38They don't want to have, you know, sort of the highest tariffs, the highest number of export controls, and the
09:45most investment restrictions placed on them.
09:47A lot has been said about the competition in AI between the United States and China.
09:52Is there also a possibility for cooperation?
09:54I see now the White House is now saying maybe we should have some rules about releasing new models, LLM
10:00models.
10:01Do you think President Xi's open to some sort of a multilateral agreement?
10:04I think that would be a very, very complex negotiation.
10:09What I understand is on the table for the summit, at the very least, is really a negotiation around both
10:17sides agreeing to terms for keeping AI models, certain AI models, advanced AI, out of the hands of rogue actors.
10:25I think that's the sort of starting point for where the two sides might come together.
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