Donald Trump is in Beijing to secure a 'big win' as Iran conflict looms large | The Business

But I very much doubt if the visit to China itself will become the off-ramp to the Iran War. Meera Rathpoopa, welcome to The Business. Pleasure to be with you. Is this meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping about an off-ramp to the Iran War or is it about business and economic ties? Well, Alicia, I think we're going to see both presidents professing to stabilise the US-China relationship and professing a much warmer set of US-China ties than we've seen in many years with the aim of making mostly trade and economic deals. There is no doubt that Iran will feature prominently on the agenda between these two leaders, but I very much doubt if the visit to China itself will become the off-ramp to the Iran War. For while Iran is an important partner to the PRC, thus far Beijing has evinced very little willingness to truly get involved in the conflict. Do you think China is quietly benefiting from the conflict in the Middle East? There's a few ways I think we can measure China as benefiting from the United States' ongoing war or frozen peace with Iran over the course of the last few months. If you listen to Chinese diplomats, for the last couple of months they've been professing in the Gulf and throughout Asia that the United States' latest gambit with Iran demonstrates that the United States is not a stable, rule-abiding power, and that talking point really benefits Xi Jinping. But on top of that, we've all seen reported the fact that the US military, which has performed exquisitely well in this operation, is nonetheless expending high-end munitions that are critically necessary for defence and deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, and in particular in contingencies like one that could occur over Taiwan. So the longer this goes on for, the longer China may feel that the United States is actually weakening itself on China's home turf. When it comes to the US economic agenda for this meeting, Donald Trump is accompanied by a number of big tech CEOs, and rare earths have been a leverage tool for China. What's the hope? First, it's clear that, particularly in the wake of this conflict with Iran, he's simply looking to come home to the States, touting a big win. He wants to be able to show that the Chinese are increasing their purchases of American agricultural products, probably of beef. It's very likely the two leaders will sign a big deal for the Chinese to buy several hundred Boeing jets, maybe even the biggest Boeing sale in that company's history. It's important to note, however, that the Chinese were always big purchasers of American beef, of American agricultural products, before the Liberation Day tariffs were put into effect. So we should apply a discount factor to anything that's announced in Beijing, because it may just be the resumption of business as usual. How would you categorise the current relationship between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping? The Chinese side is good at putting on big state visits with lots of pomp and circumstance, lots of choreographed marches, red carpets, so it's very likely that they'll leave President Trump feeling very good. The question, really, in the minds of analysts here in the United States is, what will President Xi Jinping be trying to extract from Trump in exchange for all that pomp? And that's where many of us are watching closely to see if President Trump will make additional concessions on American export controls of semiconductors or on policy related to Taiwan. What is the likelihood that there are some concessions on Taiwan? That is a big focus point in our region. Well, unfortunately, the probability seems higher than anyone is comfortable with. We know and can tell through reporting that Xi Jinping has been using his trade channel with US negotiators for the last many months to try to persuade the US side that it should downgrade its relationship with Taiwan by holding up arms sales, downgrading defense dialogues or otherwise reducing security assistance. Mira Rappuper, thank you so much.