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  • 17 hours ago
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00:00When it comes to the Iran war, we do know that Beijing has special leverage with the country.
00:06They have a strategic partnership. Still, President Trump was downplaying perhaps this
00:11conversation itself when he meets with President Xi Jinping. Take a listen.
00:16I have a great relationship with President Xi, and I think it's going to remain that way.
00:22We have a lot of things to discuss. I wouldn't say Iran is one of them, to be honest with
00:27you,
00:27because we have Iran very much under control. We're either going to make a deal or they're
00:32going to be decimated. For more, our Chief North Asia Correspondent Stephen Engel is also here with
00:38us in Beijing. Steve, a lot has changed over the past few months, but it's interesting. How would
00:45you, I guess, characterize the key aspects of this visit, the deliverables that we might expect to
00:50see, but also whether, in fact, the U.S. is coming into this with weakened leverage as a perspective,
00:56right, as the world, as Asia, but perhaps less so, China remains grappled in this energy and
01:01economic crisis that's being threatened by the ongoing war?
01:07Yeah, that's a lot to unpack, obviously, in a very tight state visit for Donald Trump. 36 hours,
01:13essentially. He's going to be arriving tonight after 7 o'clock local time in the morning, just down the
01:18moat here at Tiananmen Square, where you have the Great Hall of the People, the state reception center,
01:24if you will, where Donald Trump will meet Xi Jinping. They're also going to tour around in
01:28the southern part of Beijing and visit the Temple of Heaven. So do a little sightseeing.
01:33They're going to obviously have those very key meetings face to face. And then tomorrow,
01:39before he flies off mid-afternoon or thereabouts, back to Washington, D.C., he will have a working
01:46lunch with Xi Jinping. Lots to discuss because, again, you know, Sherry and I were there in Busan
01:53and in South Korea late last year, six months ago, when these two gentlemen last met and did sort of
02:01secure a peace. But it wasn't necessarily a trade truce that is lasting. So that's what I think is top
02:08of mind of both leaders. How do we get this truce more formalized? You know, Jameson Greer,
02:14the U.S. Trade Representative, has talked a lot about boards of trade and boards of investment
02:19to sort of formalize areas where the two sides can reach mutual understanding that are not
02:26necessarily in areas of national security. That is going to be propelled forward a little bit
02:33with this bilateral meeting over the next 36 hours. But again, and he's bringing, by the way,
02:39Donald Trump is bringing a lot of business leaders, including, of course, Tim Cook, Elon Musk
02:44and others who perhaps want to sign some big commercial deals, which Donald Trump, as you heard
02:50in that soundbite, really alluding to Iran might be off to the side, he hopes, but he wants to have
02:56those commercial deals to take home, whether it means soybean purchases, beef purchases, Boeing airplane
03:02purchases. Kelly Ortberg, the CEO of Boeing, also on this trip. But again, it all comes back to how much
03:11does Iran overshadow these discussions?
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