China Prepares To Eat Trump For Lunch

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Later this week, President Trump is scheduled to visit China for a two-day summit with Xiinping.

[00:00:06]He had hoped that the Iran war would have been successfully concluded by then. Indeed, the meeting was postponed initially to make that more likely, but of course, no, that won't be the case.

[00:00:18]And this is one of the meetings that really matters in the real world of good old-fashioned grownup geopolitics where China and the US have been circling each other for years. a declining empire and hegeimon facing the rising power seeking to transplant it. Most of what Trump has done in the first part of his second term has weakened America's hand in those discussions, but it does remain still with a number of strengths and assets at its disposal. So, how does all of that look prior to this meeting? What might that mean for the world that emerges in the next few years? Well, let's discuss. China comes into it with a number of assets and a number of challenges and weaknesses of its own.

[00:01:03]Burgeoning debt and all sorts of other things. But it does so with one big favorable wind at its back. The fact that its greatest rival has been energetically engaged in an exercise of self-sabotage. Xiinping referred to the US as a giant with a limp, which is probably a more polite version of what he's likely to say in private, but that's speculation. After all, the US has humiliated itself on the world stage with its strategic hopelessness in the Iran war, showing that all its military might, effective as it is, is only partial compensation for its utter strategic cluelessness. as evidenced by constant deadlines that get postponed or forgotten, frequently changing narratives and stated objectives. And in doing all of that, it has massively depleted its own stocks of weaponry, leaving it more vulnerable in any dispute with someone who could theoretically fight back. H who could that be? Second, the biggest weapons that Trump had been using against China, his trade tariffs, had already been pushed back to a standstill when it came to China with the revelation that it held very powerful cards of its own in terms of its leverage over rare earth minerals. But since then, Trump has also been humiliated by his tariffs being ruled to be illegal and unconstitutional.

[00:02:34]the Supreme Court ruling he cannot use the Emergency Powers Act to justify his tariffs on a whim. And then just last week, his first tranch of replacement tariffs were also ruled illegal, although that still has to go through the appeals process. Third, Trump has spent his second term attacking allies and driving them away. A process that has made many of them re-evaluate their relations with Beijing, which has been gifted the opportunity to present itself as a more stable option. So, for example, just look at who has been responding. In 2025, the leaders of Australia, France, Georgia, New Zealand, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, and the European Union all traveled to China. In January this year, the leaders of Finland, Ireland, South Korea, and the United Kingdom did likewise, followed in February by Uruguay and Germany. Last month, Spain's prime minister made his fourth visit in four years. Chinese state media unsurprisingly pointed at all this activity as supporting its narrative of a rising China and a declining USA.

[00:03:47]It's not quite as simple as that, but nevertheless, it is at least partly true. All of this comes against China's pre-existing view of the changes taking place in the world and its position in relation to them. Xiinping already viewed the United States as a late stage declining empire with a world stage ripe for his own rise. With Trump's second term, Chinese analysts have modified that view very slightly. America, they say, is a flailing latestage empire.

[00:04:25]Trump's interventions on the world stage from Venezuela through Greenland to tariffs to Iran. They have the view of a country past its peak power trying to throw around what power it has left to prove at least to itself that it is still the biggest on the block. It is of course a sign of weakness, not of strength. But that doesn't make it less dangerous. Indeed, such a flailing giant becomes even more perilous. As Zong Yuan Zoe Lu put it in Foreign Affairs magazine, a US that is unpredictable, violent, and unconstrained by the system that it once championed. What Beijing fears is that global instability created by Trump's erratic behaviors will make it harder for rational actors, obviously specifically itself, to navigate. So, how does this play into the coming summit between Trump and she? What do both sides want to achieve? How well set up are they to actually succeed? Well, Donald Trump is not famous for having a worked through strategy for his dealings with other countries. So, it's hard to be specific on the US side. He will at least want to project strength to be able to deal with China from a position of being able to try to push them to do things for him they wouldn't do for anyone else. Like maybe push the Iranians to make a deal with him. I mean some sort of deal. Anything that could be sold at home as a win. His hand in that regard of course is remarkably weak. The Iran war is unresolved and deteriorating. not coming to an end. He has recently looked utterly foolish when he announced so-called project freedom which was supposed to get stranded ships out of the straight of Hormuz only to U-turn abruptly when it turned out that the US Navy wasn't succeeding in persuading trap ships to accept their reassurances they could guarantee safe passage and also when he got a hostile and intense backlash from his key ally Saudi Arabia. China is very aware that Trump's poll ratings at home are at an all-time low and regardless of his gerrymandering efforts, this will likely leave him very much weakened after the midterm elections. So those are the factors against America achieving its objectives. For Xiinping, his goals include pushing for US acceptance of China's claim on Taiwan to a greater extent than ever before while recognizing Trump's unreliable nature if he can get some sort of grand bargain which demonstrates to the countries in China's immediate orbit that they will need to deal with it as the unavoidable reality for the foreseeable future and to push for the US to end its sanction.

[00:07:25]s against China's freedom to develop its technology however it wants. And you can see some of this playing out in the events preceding this summit. Towards the end of April, the US Treasury designated five Chinese oil refiners for buying Iranian crude oil. Just two days ago, the US State Department ratcheted up the pressure by sanctioning three Chinese companies that it accused of aiding Iran in the war against America, specifically satellite imagery companies. No such sanctions against Russian support for Iran in the same war. Notice one of life's little mysteries. Just over a week ago, Beijing rejected those sanctions. its Ministry of Commerce announced that Chinese citizens and companies should not recognize, should not enforce or comply with America's sanctions. One of the big fears in China for its changing role in the future had been that it might end up like Russia or Iran as the target for a major sanctions push which would seek to decouple it from the global financial system. The fact it now feels able to directly just seek to stare down such actions tells you a lot about how confident they're feeling about the current global dynamics. Its biggest asset in that is its continued strangle hold on rare earth minerals. It controls over 90% of the market, over 70% of global refining. Bloomberg said that Xiinping had $1.2 2 trillion dollar worth of rare earth's leverage on Trump and noted that China quote isn't shy about weaponizing that dominance. Ah yes, but you just wait until Trump gets hold of Greenland. Then he'll show you.

[00:09:20]Okay, there may be some consequences for that as well, but don't imagine that's going to stop the orange wonder.

[00:09:27]There are other more transactional details. China and the company Boeing have been in talks for a deal where they would buy 5 to600 aircraft from them which would be the company's first major order since 2017 given the various problems that Boeing has faced. The deal would be worth $50 billion and nobody should be surprised that the Boeing chief executive Kelly Ultberg is joining Trump's delegation to Beijing. That would be one of the transactional outcomes that Trump supporters would be able to point to along with likely Chinese commitments to buy more US soybeans and other agricultural products. So that will make it a win. Maybe there'll be some advances as well on a system for managing bilateral trade to resolve disputes without having a crisis every 5 minutes. A proposed board of trade. Now, why would Trump want a board of trade?

[00:10:25]You might be wondering. He doesn't even believe in trade. Well, I mean, he started a war, but that didn't stop him from setting up a board of peace, so why not? There may be some agreements on AI, maybe. Plus, of course, the easiest bit, all the symbolic pomp that Trump loves so much, the state dinner, the photo ops, gold colored presents perhaps. But really, the power struggle underpins all of that. At the heart of it, of course, is the question of Taiwan. The US has a long-standing formulation that it quote does not support Taiwan independence.

[00:11:08]Last year, it was dropped, although it was denied that this was a change in policy. Well, Xiinping would like to see that evolve into an alternative statement that Washington actually actively opposes Taiwan independence. A shift from a passive statement to an active one. She made the same request to President Biden and was refused. Taiwan observers are closely watching to see if the O word oppose comes out of the summit. This underpins the fear of many of China's neighbors that Trump will want to strike a grand bargain with China, one that will leave them at the mercy of their larger neighbor. The second real issue of focus will be ending some of the US and Western sanctions against Chinese semiconductor manufacturer and AI. Trump already gave some ground on this, but China wants full relief, not just case-bycase exceptions.

[00:12:10]Ultimately, the power struggle will be about who gets to set the terms of reference for the relationship going forward. Now, a number of things won't be affected by the summit. For instance, the big fossil fuel champion Trump has done more to promote China's clean energy technology products with his blundering around in Iran than any number of COP climate summits could ever have achieved. Since the war started and the energy crisis that came with it, Beijing's exports of solar and battery products have surged. That's just a gift from Trump. Won't even get discussed.

[00:12:47]The war has also promoted wider use of China's international currency, the renmi. Growth in use of the currency is a necessary prerequisite for meeting China's ultimate goal of transplanting the US dollar. Now, that's a goal that remains a long way off, but it's had a very helpful boost thanks to President Trump and his America first brand. No doubt China retains some nervousness about the forthcoming summit. Keeping face is important and Trump is an unguided missile at the best of times, but he is likely to be trying to be on his best behavior since China has real power and he tends to respect that.

[00:13:30]Xiinping is arguably the world's most successful dictator and he will rather envy that. None of that stopped him previously lying about Xiinping supposedly calling him to beg to make a trade deal when all reliable evidence was it was the other way round. So you never know. But Trump knows that he comes in with fewer cards than he would like. Notwithstanding his less than solid grip on reality, Birdie is likely to throw some dramatic headlines into the mix to seek to play power games to try to make all the focus and discussion purely about him. So, it remains to be seen whether he amazes the world with his previously unsuspected ability to stay on script or whether he confirms the prior judgment of the world by scoring massive own goals at every opportunity.

[00:14:28]It will be distracting no doubt maybe important as well depending on the details. But the real thing to watch will be the questions of conflict and power between the two countries. The things that are likely to persist well into the postrump period. You know that happy time when people will only ever talk about the presidency of Donald J.

[00:14:54]Trump, I don't know, in order to frighten children at Halloween, maybe.