‘It’s Not Because They Want to Be Friends’: Brilliant on What to Expect From the Trump-Xi Summit

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]But we start with the postponed Beijing Summit between President Trump and President Xi, rescheduled because of a war in Iran that was supposed to be over by now.

[00:00:08]How much will it affect discussions between the two leaders, assuming that they happen as planned?

[00:00:13]Myron Brilliant is a senior counselor at the DGA-Albright Group and recently returned from China.

[00:00:21]-I think there's been a fair amount between the economic leaders, right?

[00:00:25]So Vice-Premier He Lifeng on the Chinese side, and his counterpart here, Secretary Bessent, and Ambassador Greer have had six or seven rounds of discussions.

[00:00:35]So I think on that side, they understand where the guardrails are, what can be done.

[00:00:40]There are some questions about how much can be done in areas like export controls.

[00:00:44]But I think I think the United States thinks they're going to get something on, you know, market access, more beef, more soybeans, maybe Boeing planes, something, progress in those kinds of areas.

[00:00:56]So I think that side of the equation is good.

[00:00:58]The side that is less clear is the political side.

[00:01:00]As you suggested, summits of this nature with this high expectations tend to take months to prepare.

[00:01:07]With the president and the administration distracted by the war in the Middle East, it's not had the same level of political connectivity between, say, Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his counterpart, Secretary of State Rubio.

[00:01:20]There is dialogue, but I'm not sure the infrastructure of the system has been as deep and broad as you would expect of a summit of this nature.

[00:01:29]Westin: If you think about the wish list from the two sides, you just mentioned some of the things the United States would like, selling more soybeans, for example, Boeing planes or things like that.

[00:01:38]But this is the first meeting these two leaders, since they really had sort of a trade dispute, particularly over things like critical minerals.

[00:01:47]Have they put it back together?

[00:01:49]-Well, 25 was a tumultuous year in the US-China relationship, right?

[00:01:54]There was the escalation on tariffs, and of course, you know, I think China was more prepared, and they used their advantage.

[00:02:01]They leveraged the critical minerals rare-earth issue to their advantage, and they put some choke points on the United States, not just the United States, Japan as well.

[00:02:10]So 2025 was an unpredictable and complicated year.

[00:02:15]2026 hasn't been made easier by the situation in Iran, because that's another dynamic in the relationship.

[00:02:20]But both sides recognize that a global recession doesn't serve their interests.

[00:02:25]Both sides are trying to manage a further deterioration of the relationship.

[00:02:30]It's not because they want to be friends, but it's because each side recognizes that stability is in their self-interest.

[00:02:36]So that's what they're managing.

[00:02:37]They're trying to create a concrete list of deliverables.

[00:02:40]It's not going to be a home run of a visit.

[00:02:43]But even moving incrementally forward and having the optics of the two leaders meet not just once, but possibly two or three times this year, that's progress in one sense.

[00:02:52]That creates some stability.

[00:02:54]But to me, it's not a ceiling. It's a floor.

[00:02:57]Westin: You mentioned that President Trump said he'd like to have several meetings this year.

[00:03:01]Does that reduce the likelihood that anyone meeting will have a major breakthrough?

[00:03:05]Because the Chinese are thinking, "Wait a second, we've got more of these coming."

[00:03:08]-Well, I was in Beijing, as you know, 10 days ago.

[00:03:11]And my sense is the Chinese are pretty confident.

[00:03:13]They think they've cracked the code on President Trump.

[00:03:16]They think they've, you know, they got a playbook.

[00:03:18]And their playbook is not to appease the Trump administration, like they did try in Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0.

[00:03:26]They're punching back.

[00:03:28]And we see a little bit of this on both sides, tit for tat.

[00:03:31]US issues new regulations under the FCC, the Chinese issue new exit bans that affect supply chains on critical minerals.

[00:03:39]So each side is feeling each other out, so to speak.

[00:03:43]I think ultimately, China will do enough to create some momentum out of this visit, but not so much that they deliver all that they can deliver in this first summit.

[00:03:55]They're going to test the market, meaning they're going to test whether they can count on Trump delivering.

[00:04:01]And that's--that's pretty unpredictable right now.

[00:04:05]Westin: What's on the Chinese wishlist?

[00:04:06]What do they want Trump to deliver?

[00:04:09]-I think a couple of things.

[00:04:10]And I think they're going to be hard to get.

[00:04:11]One is they want guardrails around export controls.

[00:04:14]But you know, from the administration officials I talked to, they don't want to go there.

[00:04:19]They view that as a national security imperative in the United States, not something to negotiate in the China-US relationship.

[00:04:25]But that's clearly high on their list.

[00:04:27]Second, they want some kind of clarity on tariffs.

[00:04:30]There, there's a little bit of give and take.

[00:04:33]The administration seems to like this idea of a board of trade, which side gives up something on tariffs.

[00:04:40]We want to get something back in return, obviously, market access.

[00:04:44]But I think that is negotiable.

[00:04:47]The third thing is, I think the administration has to watch out for, is the Chinese want something on Taiwan.

[00:04:52]They'd love to see the president make some kind of statement around peaceful unification.

[00:04:58]We've had 5 decades where the United States has stayed the course on its policy on Taiwan.

[00:05:04]The Chinese think that dealing with the president of the United States, they might be able to get something done in Taiwan.

[00:05:10]I hope not. That would be a game changer.

[00:05:12]Westin: Is there any prospect that President Trump might ask for help from President Xi on Iran?

[00:05:18]-I think that he'll lean in on that issue.

[00:05:22]But depending what you refer as help, I think he'll lean in and try to get the Chinese to back off helping.

[00:05:29]But we know that China has already helped Iran on surveillance technology.

[00:05:35]We know that they've helped on drone technology.

[00:05:37]So China has leaned in a little bit, but China has to be careful.

[00:05:41]Their stakes in the Middle East are not as high as their stakes in the US-China relationship.

[00:05:46]Stability between China and United States is still a higher priority than coming to the aid of Iran.

[00:05:51]They know that.

[00:05:52]They do have 10% of their oil coming from Iran, but they have diversified in the energy space, not just on oil and gas suppliers, but also in solar and renewables.

[00:06:04]So therefore, they're less reliant on Iran than they used to be.

[00:06:08]And that also factors into their equation.

[00:06:11]Westin: You know China well.

[00:06:12]You also know U.S. business well.

[00:06:15]For U.S. business people, leaders in this country, what should they be looking at in this summit?

[00:06:21]-Well, you know, symbols matter.

[00:06:23]So let's see what happens with China and the United States at the summit.

[00:06:28]Do the leaders embrace some kind of pact?

[00:06:31]Do they provide a little bit more business certainty?

[00:06:34]Do they create space on both sides where there's not going to be this tit for tat retaliation?

[00:06:40]There's a lot of sensitivities. There's a lot of competition.

[00:06:43]I'm looking for symbols on AI.

[00:06:45]OK? We're going to compete intensely with China on AI.

[00:06:49]But we also have to think about the risk in the system.

[00:06:52]And China raised that.

[00:06:54]Government leader after government leader raised AI as, "Is this an opportunity?"

[00:06:58]I think business would encourage that.

[00:07:00]Well, you know, during the height of the Soviet Union-US Cold War, we had a hotline between Moscow and Washington.

[00:07:08]Should we create an AI hotline? Should we have red lines on AI?

[00:07:12]Should we create safety protocols?

[00:07:14]So this is the kind of things that I think would be stabilizing in the relationship.

[00:07:18]We're looking for that.

[00:07:19]We're obviously also looking for each side to pull back on some of the regulatory behavior that creates mischief in the relationship, that creates irritants and creates impediments.

[00:07:29]And we'll hope to see some of that come out of this summit.

[00:07:33]But the deliverables that we see at the summit are not going to be home runs.

[00:07:38]They're going to be singles. Singles matter.

[00:07:40]You get enough singles, you score runs.

[00:07:42]But I think we should be cautioned against having high expectations since the first summit.

[00:07:48]But it's still important to have.

[00:07:50]-It was the Iran war that caused the delay in the summit.

[00:07:55]-What we've seen over the past year and almost a half between the two countries has been this kind of tit for tat diplomacy around.

[00:08:02]-Elizabeth Economy, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, thinks that that will not be the central issue for the leaders as they look for common ground.

[00:08:11]Westin: There is a summit scheduled between President Trump and President Xi in Beijing.

[00:08:15]First of all, will it happen?

[00:08:17]-I think it's going to happen.

[00:08:19]I think we're in the midst of ceasefire.

[00:08:21]I think the president is determined to hold the ceasefire in Iran in order to have the summit, if for no other reason.

[00:08:27]Westin: How much will Iran influence the agenda at the summit?

[00:08:31]-I think the Iranian issue and the war in Iran is going to be a secondary issue.

[00:08:36]I think for Xi Jinping and for Donald Trump, this summit is really about finding a degree of stability in the relationship.

[00:08:44]I think that's really the issue on which both sides are aligned.

[00:08:47]And I think that's going to come in the trade and investment realm.

[00:08:51]So I think Iran will be there, Russia-Ukraine will be there, but they'll be very much secondary issues.

[00:08:56]Westin: Do the Chinese trust President Trump?

[00:08:58]Because President Trump is known for being sort of unpredictable at times.

[00:09:02]-Yes. I think that they trust that if he gets what he wants, that he will also give to them.

[00:09:08]And so I think they've spent a lot of time trying to understand what his priorities are and what he's prepared to give in return.

[00:09:15]Of course they were very pleasantly surprised by the president's decision to allow the export of H200s last summer.

[00:09:23]That was a big win for the Chinese.

[00:09:26]So I think they're looking similarly for some new technologies to be lifted out of the export control bucket.

[00:09:33]I think they'd like to see a reduction in the tariffs.

[00:09:36]Basically they want to be treated as a normal power.

[00:09:39]They don't want to have, you know, sort of the highest tariffs, the highest number of export controls and the most investment restrictions placed on them.

[00:09:48]Westin: A lot has been said about the competition in AI between the United States and China.

[00:09:52]Is there also a possibility for cooperation?

[00:09:55]I see now the White House is now saying maybe we should have some rules about releasing new models, LLM models.

[00:10:01]Do you think President Xi is open to some sort of a multilateral agreement?

[00:10:05]-I think that would be a very, very complex negotiation.

[00:10:09]What I understand is on the table for the summit, at the very least, is really a negotiation around both sides agreeing to terms for keeping AI models, certain AI models, advanced AI, out of the hands of rogue actors.

[00:10:25]I think that's the sort of starting point for where the two sides might come together.