Trump Xi China summit Everything you need to know

Welcome back to Live Now, I'm Austin Westphal, a live look at the White House. President Trump and President Xi, they are preparing for their highly anticipated summit. We'll have you covered tomorrow night as their meetings get underway. Trump is en route to China as we speak. Let's check in with Fox's Ayesha Hasni. She's taking a look at the high stakes summit. She's reporting from China. Do you think he can help in any way? Tonight, President Trump says he can handle Iran alone as he heads to China for a summit with President Xi in Beijing, noting, though, that China is the largest buyer of Iranian crude oil. We're going to have a long talk about it. They get a lot of their oil from that area. We've had no problem. And he's been a friend of mine. He's been somebody that we get along with. And I think you're going to see that good things are going to happen. President Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is on life support. Democrats say Americans are already paying the price. He started this attack on Iran and gas prices went through the roof and 1,500 tankers are sitting in the Straits of Hormuz trying to figure out what this president's up to. The president also says he'll discuss Taiwan with Xi, the largest chip maker in the world, amid an ongoing threat of a Chinese invasion. Tariffs, AI and rare earth minerals used in chips are also expected to come up, while American farmers hit by higher diesel fuel prices want China to buy 25 more million metric tons of soybeans. They are such a large buyer that if we lose that market, it's going to negatively impact soybean buyers, soybean farmers throughout the United States. Trump is also bringing with him 16 tech and business CEOs, including Elon Musk, Apple's Tim Cook and BlackRock's Larry Fink. A united front, says the U.S. ambassador to China. These people want a level playing field. They're here to echo what President Trump is talking about. And Fox has learned also joining the president on this trip to Beijing is Secretary of War Pete Hecseth, the Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, the Trade Representative Jameson Greer and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was actually sanctioned as a senator back in 2020. That, of course, does not apply to him as he is now the top diplomat for the U.S. In Beijing, I'm Ayesha Hasni, Fox News. And we'll be checking in with Ayesha's reporting as the summit moves forward. Let's bring in retired Marine intelligence officer, national security analyst and the host of the Strat Podcast, Al Kempfer. He's here with me. I've been reading about this a lot lately, how both China and the United States, they've been saying that their ties have been broadly stable in recent months. Is that true? You know, Austin, I think it's been true. I don't know if it's so true because we've been putting so much focus on China, is our focus has been diverted elsewhere. Obviously, Iran, the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, that's certainly taken up all of our attention in the last couple of months. And then if you go back before that, you have Venezuela, you have U.S. doing strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific on drug boats and semi-submersibles. And so the U.S. has been very busy. And of course, there's been a lot of back and forth between the White House and various capitals in Europe. Not always the most positive bit of rhetoric between the two. So I think when you look at everything going on, yeah, the U.S. relationship with China, certainly much more stable, a heck of a lot more stable than it was a year ago when we're imposing huge tariffs. And certainly last year, imposing these massive tariffs, and then China imposing these massive counter tariffs or reciprocal tariffs. So yes, things have been a lot more stable, I'd say, the last few months. It seems that Trump doesn't want Iran to overshadow efforts on other diplomatic ventures with China. China, they do though, if we're talking about the Iran conflict, China does have a vested interest to get the Strait of Hormuz open, right? Absolutely. 70% of oil in China is imported. Half of that oil goes to the Strait of Hormuz. I think 80 to 90% of Iranian oil, of exported oil, was going to China. So that gives you an idea of where this all sits. Yes, China has a huge stakeholder in getting the Strait open. They're a huge stakeholder in getting Iranian oil going again. They're a huge stakeholder in making sure Iranian oil keeps coming. So yes, they are a big stakeholder. But with that said, this is part of that calm that was kind of pointed out earlier, is that we have not seen China really step in in any assertive role to assist Iran. Covertly, yes, assisting Iran. Overtly, no, not assisting Iran, have not put a military presence into the Strait or into the Persian Gulf at all. So we are seeing China kind of standing back on this and not take an assertive role. Russia, a little more assertive role. Of course, China is the biggest backer of Russia. So one could say, if you're backing Russia and Russia's sending arms to Iran, well, then you're kind of indirectly supporting Iran. That's true. But I think for the purposes of this trip, they're going to kind of overlook some of those improprieties, if you will, and just kind of focus on the main thing, which is we both have a vested interest to get this war done, to get the Strait open. And I think we both would believe that a non-nuclear or non-nuclear armed Iran is probably a good idea. I don't know if China feels as strongly about that as the US, but they generally, they don't want to see rapid, rampant nuclear proliferation around the world either. A spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I believe this would be the equivalent of Marco Rubio on China's end, says President Xi will have in-depth exchanges of views with President Trump on major issues concerning China-US relations and on world peace and development. Head of State Diplomacy plays an irreplaceable role in providing strategic guidance for China-US relations. China stands ready to work with the US to expand cooperation and manage differences in the spirit of equality, respect, and mutual benefit, and provide more stability and certainty for a transforming and volatile world. A live look at the White House, where it's approaching 8.45 in the nation's capital. Trump is not at the White House. We'll let you know when we hear of him arriving in China. We know Trump likes deals. If Trump wants to cut a deal while he's there, what kind of deal would he be most likely to make during this short visit? Probably some sort of trade deal. That seems the most likely thing, is you'll see a trade deal of some sort. A lot of things have been talked about. Certainly rare earths are a big deal. I'm kind of thinking he's going to look at soybeans and look at agricultural products. That is such a huge area where US farmers, which is a significant part of his political base, particularly during a midterm, he would love to bring home something, pardon the expression, bring home the bacon, literally in this case, basically selling meat and other agricultural products over to China. So I think that'll be a big part of it. Rare earths will obviously be a big discussion because of our dependence on rare earths, on Chinese-controlled rare earths around the world. I think those will all be. But I would also throw out something. If you look at the, we hit those uranium sites, those enrichment sites in Iran, obliterated them, so to speak, last summer. And we're very concerned about Iran still trying to make a nuclear weapon, and we want to go in there and pull that enriched uranium out. There's only really two countries in the world that have the forces, the rather unusual technical forces that could go in and do that, and that's the US and China. I would not be surprised if there's some sort of, maybe a memorandum of understanding or something like that, that if Iran decides to give up its enriched uranium, that perhaps China might work with us to go in there because we both have the technical expertise to do so, to actually pull that stuff out. And believe me, that is gonna be a very hazardous operation because of the state of those facilities after the bombings. But I would not be surprised to see something like that. It's kind of a very technical, unusual thing, but I also think it's one of those things where we could maybe agree upon and maybe hold that up. We saw this in Ayesha's piece, it's worth bringing up again. President Trump is traveling with a number of high profile CEOs and heads of lots of major companies that includes Apple's Tim Cook, BlackRock's Larry Fink, and a number of others. We know, of course, Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla also there. So, Hal, also we saw Secretary Besant, he arrived in Incheon, South Korea moments ago. And you heard in Ayesha's report that Pete Hegseth will be here. So there's a lot of high profile figures that are going to be a part of this summit. But what about the people that we see on our screen right now? The number of companies, Meta included in this, Citibank included in this as well. Why are so many prolific companies and the heads of so many prolific companies involved with this trip? Well, many of them have very, very large investments in China, and they have to take every opportunity to secure those investments. Certainly over this last year, a lot of those investments were looking very rocky with the tariff back and forth going on. And Tesla has huge manufacturing operations there. Apple has huge manufacturing operations there. So they have big reasons why they want to be there. They want to have a seat at the table. They want to be talking about this and they want to, they're basically looking after their own financial interests. BlackRock, of course, has a big interest in China as well. And BlackRock is actually at the center of that deal where they're taking over those two port sites that were previously owned by a Hong Kong company. So that's one of those things that I'm sure is going to be discussed, maybe not first and foremost, but somewhere in there, the Panama Canal area, the Panama Port area discussion will be there. And I think that's why BlackRock's there because they're a key component of that. So there's a lot of very key leaders throughout industry that obviously many of them look at high tech, high tech access to rare earth type metals and things like that. So obviously they're all there. You know, what's interesting is you have certainly a high level entourage of top government officials on Air Force One, and then you have all these top business officials that are flying with them. I actually saw some stuff today where there's actually concerns voiced that about continuity of government and continuity of business that we had so many top CEOs and top government officials all flying on one plane that the big what if was coming out of that. And I was like, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it's a very safe plane. They certainly maintain it very well. It's very well protected. But it was certainly the all your eggs in one basket analogy did come up because of just the the number of top leaders that were on that on that plane, both in government and business. And you gotta wonder if this will be one of the last times we see Apple's Tim Cook participating in a high profile event like this since he recently announced he'll be stepping back as CEO. I believe he'll still be on board as he'll be the head of their board, I believe. A couple more things I got to ask you about. We've done so much coverage about fentanyl, and you often hear about fentanyl precursors coming from China. Is there a discussion to be had there? I think there is a discussion. It's interesting when you look at the top things we're going to talk about now, first and foremost, despite the fact that going over to China to talk about things that deal with China and the US directly, the first thing they're going to talk about is Iran. I mean, that's that's the big thing that Xi and Donald Trump will be talking about, is Iran. Now, is fentanyl on the list? Yes. I mean, you look at what we're doing with Southern Spear, and right now we're hitting boats or carrying cocaine out of South America. But certainly fentanyl is an epidemic in the US. It is one of the reasons everyone's really focused on illegal drugs imported from Central South America, south of the border. And so it is almost impossible to believe that at something like this, there would not be a fentanyl discussion. I don't think it will be first, it won't be high on the list of things. There's other things they want to talk about first. But I can't believe they're going to walk out there and not talk about fentanyl. And that may be something where, you know, certainly China would say, yes, we want to stop drug exports, fentanyl, fentanyl precursor component or chemicals. We would like to do stuff on that. And they've said that many, many times before. What they say and what they do doesn't always completely match. But at least from an overt political standpoint, I think they would like to say something about that. That may result in some sort of agreement as well. Is Taiwan too thorny of a topic to bring up on a short visit? Thorny, but they're going to talk about it, all right? It kind of goes out saying that is on the list of things that's like in the top, maybe not the first thing, but the second or third thing they're going to talk about Taiwan. And China has been after a period where they were not being aggressive for a while, which is kind of interesting to watch. They became very aggressive, lots of maritime exercises, lots of aviation stuff, pushing it right up to that line where they go into the basically the air defense zone of Taiwan. Same thing with doing exercises in and around Taiwan. Of course, the US recognizes Taiwan as part of China, but a separate system. It is kind of an unusual thing. We don't recognize as an independent nation, a separate country altogether. We do not have formal, we used to have formal diplomatic relations. We do not have those same diplomatic relations with them now. But with that said, we have gone on record saying we will defend Taiwan if China tries to militarily take it over. But China has been very aggressive this year, and it's widely considered that somewhere within the next year, probably, China will feel that it militarily, it could actually go in and try to take Taiwan. Whether they would succeed or not is another issue. But I do think they believe they will have the military capability to do so. The United States is Taiwan's biggest ally. Hal, we'll be checking in tomorrow around the time that we expect the summit to get underway. Hal is the host of the Strat Podcast. You can listen to Strat anywhere podcasts are available. Thanks, Hal.