How will President Trump respond to discussions on Taiwan and AI capabilities with President Xi?

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]I think the anxiety comes, Matt, if the president starts to think about basically lifting the floodgates on certain areas of AI capability, not just certain chips, but the [music] ability to do lithography. China still lags there. We have some >> [music] >> um capabilities in uh lithography that are still cutting edge. There's been some discussions about, you know, providing [music] that to China. And also there are real worries about how the president is likely to talk about Taiwan.

[00:00:35]And you know, [music] you there it historically, and I reviewed some of the conversations between President Trump and President Xi from the first term, and there are occasional flourishes of language by the president that suggests that he doesn't have the same commitment to the maintenance of peace and stability that perhaps previous presidents have had, and that he might be prepared to think about um leaning a little bit more towards China in how to consider the situation going forward. This is not lost on Chinese interlocutors, and I fully expect President Xi will try to push, control, and engage President Trump to get him more on uh China's side with respect to how uh the issues related to uh cross straits are are are thought about and [music] uh proclaimed with respect to US policy.