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  • 18 hours ago
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00:00There you go, you hear the music here and the procession as we await for President Trump
00:04to come out of his car. There he is, there, walking towards Xi Jinping. It's 36 hours,
00:13that's really not that long of time for the president to step down here in Beijing. And
00:19there you go, another handshake there. Hopefully we'll hear a little bit more about that before
00:25they enter into these talks about, usually they do have a little bit of a sort of introduction
00:30here. They do speak to the press a little bit here ahead of this bilateral. So certainly,
00:35there you go, the two men. This is quite historic, Dave.
00:39It really is. There are very few, and this is far and few between, that we do see, of course,
00:47both of them, and as far as us being able to see them walk side to side like this. I
00:52think,
00:53I'm just racking my memory the last time we actually saw them walk across the lawn together.
00:57But yes, it's worth pointing out, of course, that Donald Trump was last in, in mainland China as
01:02president, of course, back, I believe, during his first term. He is now currently, of course,
01:07there's Wang Yi, of course, and he is just meeting, of course, the rest of the Chinese delegation there,
01:10just waiting. Well, the Chinese group and, of course, the U.S. delegation is just a few steps
01:15away from where we are as well. Just to give you a sense of what is in store today. So
01:19if all goes to
01:20plan and on schedule, they will both make their way inside the Great Hall of the People for that
01:27bilateral meeting, followed, of course, by the state banquet, which is also being held at the same
01:34venue later tonight. And in a couple of minutes, you'll see, of course, that U.S. delegation,
01:39and the U.S. president is ushering, of course, the Chinese president to meet, of course,
01:43his side of the congregation there. Yeah, and it's interesting to know, right,
01:47these two men have met at least six times over the past decade. Those meetings, though,
01:52have mostly held during sort of the sidelines of, you know, APEC or any sort of multilateral summits.
01:59You know, so it is a little bit more, I guess you would say, meaningful than the fact that
02:04President Trump has flown all the way from the U.S. to the Chinese capital to meet for the first
02:09time
02:09in nearly a decade. So the pageantry certainly is showing here in full force. But of course,
02:16what lies underneath that is, of course, the deeper fault lines that we do see.
02:20You just not remember what happened. Let's not forget, I should say, what happened last year,
02:25right, when it was probably the worst that we've seen between this U.S.-China relationship
02:30during Liberation Day, and we saw tariffs north of 100 percent at one point. We have come back,
02:37you know, down substantially on that front here. Whether we get any more sort of breakthroughs
02:43on the tariff discussions, that certainly is one thing that we're looking out for. We do know the
02:46U.S. has talked about bringing up reciprocal tariffs once again, once that Section 301 investigation
02:53concludes this summer. Whether the U.S. is willing to do that at risk of China retaliating is
02:59certainly one thing. But I think a lot of that decision depends on what happens in the next 36
03:03hours. There is very little indication that this should not go smoothly, of course. If you're
03:10familiar with how the Chinese side tends to work things out, of course, the details are very
03:15important. And they are able, of course, to iron out many of these things ahead of these big
03:20meetings, of course. And yes, it's a point Yvonne was just making there, how far we've actually come.
03:26It was literally this time last year, a few weeks after Liberation Day, when tariffs on
03:32both sides went up substantially over the course of days and weeks. But here we are, 12 months
03:37on from that moment in time.
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