00:00I want to bring in our senior Asia economics and government correspondent, Rebecca Chung-Wilkins now,
00:04who also helped lead Bloomberg's coverage of the Trump Chiefs Summit.
00:07She joins us now from Singapore.
00:08Rebecca, it certainly was a busy day for all of us yesterday.
00:11What's the team working on today and really what came out of this summit?
00:17Well, I think day two does shift the tone a little bit.
00:21We are now looking for more of those concrete deliverables.
00:24Yesterday, of course, very warm words, heavy on the symbolism
00:28when we look at that visit to the Temple of Heaven.
00:30And dribs and drabs.
00:32So we had Greer there talking about billions of dollars worth of agricultural deals.
00:36But, as my colleague Jason pointed out, probably not new ones when it comes to soybeans.
00:41Beef is another early winner here as well.
00:45But semiconductors have not come up as a major sticking point
00:49and a major talking point in the way that it was hoped for.
00:52And, of course, some reaction now to Trump's most recent comments on the Strait of Hormuz.
00:57So certainly still looking for any evidence of a real reset.
01:02All right.
01:03That's a good way to kind of bring in our next guest, Ben Kusheva there,
01:07international trade and investment partner at Hogan Levels.
01:10He is a former assistant general counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
01:14Ben, it's great to have you here.
01:15Pleasure to be here.
01:16I'm sure you've been watching all the pageantry, the pomp and all that, and the circumstance.
01:21I mean, overall, your take on what happened in Beijing.
01:23Well, I think the summit benefited from low expectations, but it's overall been successful.
01:30We've seen a lot of pomp, not a lot of change in circumstances, but that pomp matters too,
01:35especially when you look back at when Trump was coming into office,
01:39the expectations that the U.S.-China relationship would be a lot more confrontational.
01:43Now you're seeing two sides working together, trying to resolve common problems, but also common interests.
01:54Ben, Rebecca here.
01:56I mean, in some ways, when we see Trump and Xi interacting, it is a bit of a throwback to
02:012017
02:02and the warmth and sort of personality of that relationship.
02:05I'm wondering, how much does that kind of leader chemistry actually still matter,
02:11given the sort of structural, fundamental, structural adversarial nature of the relationship
02:16between China and the U.S.?
02:18Someone told me a long time ago that governance comes down to four P's of policy, politics, process,
02:27but also people.
02:28And so I think having positive relationships at the highest of levels
02:32and being able to resolve differences because there's trust is very, very helpful.
02:37You've got to remember all these people are jet lagged and coming to a strange place
02:42and trying their best to have positive relationships.
02:46So if there's a level of trust either between Trump and Xi or everyone else in the delegation,
02:51that helps a lot.
02:56Throwing this forward a little bit about the delegation, what happens next?
02:59I mean, the Trump administration once talked about fundamentally reshaping the Chinese economy.
03:04Now that focus is much narrower.
03:07It's about preserving trade.
03:08It's about getting some of those exports of soybeans and beef and so on.
03:13To what extent has the Trump administration significantly reduced
03:18and pared back its ambitions when it comes to China?
03:21And how does that change the reality on the ground when it comes to negotiations for businesses?
03:29I think it's a recognition that China's model is here to stay.
03:33And for decades, that has been a big part of those negotiations with little success.
03:39Now we're starting to see a more realistic relationship between the two countries
03:43where they say we can trade in these areas, we can try to resolve common differences,
03:48continue to invest, but we're not going to try to fundamentally change either side.
03:52So in some ways, it's less ambitious, but in other ways, it's more realistic
03:56and perhaps more successful to make positive changes in the relationship.
04:02It seems like when it came to chips, I mean, Jameson Grimm mentioned in that interview
04:06that it wasn't really that prominent in these talks here right now.
04:11What sort of clarity do we still need really here?
04:13Whether China is actually willing to take some of these advanced chips from NVIDIA?
04:16Yeah, I think I saw just as I was coming on that Secretary Besant said something about
04:21we'll sell the H-200 chips if they're willing to buy them.
04:24And of course, we've seen stalling on the Chinese side to allow them in.
04:28And so for a while, it was about the United States not selling them.
04:32Now it's whether or not China will buy them.
04:34So it remains one of those fundamental issues.
04:36All of the export control rules, which I work on every day, are very, very complicated.
04:41But also the policy around them is challenging, too.
04:49Ben, I mean, to pick up on your point there, you advise companies that are caught in the crosshairs of
04:54this every day.
04:55I think 60 IPOs, perhaps we'll be right at my last count.
04:59What are executives actually most worried about these days?
05:03Is it tariffs?
05:04Is it Taiwan?
05:05Is it something else?
05:06And does this meeting actually move the needle for them?
05:11Yeah, I think that this meeting creates a new floor on U.S.-China relations.
05:17So, you know, we saw from 2017 up until the end of 2025 a continued devolution of the U.S.-China
05:24relationship.
05:25Hopefully this summit leads to a floor and people can take a sigh of relief that it's not going to
05:31get worse,
05:32that we're not truly decoupling, companies are not having to choose sides of China and the United States.
05:38But that said, there are a lot of problems that can come up.
05:42I work every day in conflict of laws scenarios between the United States and China.
05:47The U.S. sanctions, China's anti-foreign sanctions law, export controls, outbound investment reviews, CFIUS.
05:53So there's a lot of ways in which U.S., Chinese and companies around the world can still get caught
06:00up in this legal and regulatory mess.
06:02So I think those have not gone away, even if the overall picture has gotten a little clearer.
06:10And for those companies from a sort of ground level, what's the make or break issue here when it comes
06:18to that U.S.-China negotiation?
06:19What is it that they really need to see? And do you think there's any possibility that we do actually
06:25see that delivered,
06:26maybe not from this meeting, but through the rest of this year?
06:30I think if these meetings continue to go well and we avoid any flashpoints in crises,
06:37whether it's Taiwan, South China Sea or other issues,
06:40and that you're able to maintain the Busan truce on tariffs and rare earths,
06:46if these meetings lead to actual deliverables on other issues like technology, AI, trade,
06:53if this board of trade idea gets off the ground,
06:56then you'll see companies being able to invest more heavily
07:00and not feel like the ground's going to come out from under them.
07:04You mentioned Taiwan.
07:05I think everyone is parsing through this readout that came through from Beijing
07:10while the two leaders were meeting that maybe this is a new threat of some sort.
07:14Some say maybe not. I mean, this is what you hear from Beijing rhetoric all the time.
07:18But how do you think China is going to approach any sort of, I guess, irritants, I guess,
07:26in this whole relationship moving forward?
07:29Yeah. Well, I think Xi stated current policy perhaps more clearly than he has before,
07:36but it was still current policy.
07:38And the reaction in the domestic area in China was much more muted.
07:42In the West, it was seen as a threat, and it's on the headlines of every newspaper right now,
07:47and that's the takeaway from what is otherwise a very friendly summit.
07:51And so I don't think it's a change in policy on China.
07:54I think, if anything, the risks of conflict over Taiwan have diminished over the last 12 months.
08:00I think you see the United States changing its policies to some degree,
08:04and China appears to also be more willing to be patient with Taiwan,
08:08which has been their policy for decades now.
08:10So I think it's, of all the things you can worry about in this fairly volatile world,
08:15Taiwan might be one that you can be like, okay, maybe this is not just,
08:18it's going to happen immediately.
08:20Of course, I have no crystal ball, and there could be problems,
08:22but I think about it a little less,
08:25and I advise my clients on supply chain issues a little less on that issue.
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