Catherine Rampell

Hey, good to see you.

Long time no see.

I was wondering where you were.

Okay, so you haven't made it back.

QVC is bankrupt, so one of the many Trump victims.

He's just a master diplomat right there.

You know, he's buttering him up so that he can swoop in and make the deal of the century.

I think that's what's going on.

No, I think what's actually going on is he brought, you know, a little entourage of rich people to...

I think he thinks impress President Xi because that's how Trump operates, right?

He thinks when you're surrounded by rich people, that means you're great and that means that they're paying fealty to you.

Probably a lot of those rich people, i.e.

the CEOs who were there, I think are really in harm mitigation mode.

Maybe they're there financially.

I mean, probably they have multiple objectives, right?

One of them is to do a little solid for Donald Trump or what Donald Trump thinks is a favor, but also make sure that they walk away without giant new tariffs on iPhones or or any of the other supplies that they might be importing from China.

So I think all of that stuff is going on there.

I mean, I guess I don't know what frame this was in their overall interaction.

It certainly looks like it shows the power dynamics that you just described.

And I think, however literal this particular picture can be interpreted, I think it does reflect a general shift in the power balance between China and the United States economically, diplomatically, in basically all of the ways that matter.