James Kynge

That's really interesting.

I must say, I get the sense there's a disconnect between the diplomacy between the US and China, particularly ahead of Trump's planned visit next month, and the reality of the deep state in both countries becoming more and more wary and putting on more and more controls and talking about, you know, more and more sanctions.

In addition to what we've just been talking about, the DOJ in the US is actively prosecuting individuals who are smuggling advanced NVIDIA servers into China.

The Commerce Department is investigating companies like DeepSeek for their use of restricted American AI chips.

And there's a couple of big pieces of legislation being proposed, such as the Decoupling America's Artificial Intelligence Capability from China Act.

That's not law yet, but it's proposed.

And it threatens up to 20 years in prison and millions in fines if you engage with specific Chinese AI technology.

So

There does seem to be a lot going on in the background.

The U.S.

seems to be really getting tough, maybe in the shadows.

Maybe Trump will be out there in front making nice with the Chinese and the mood music around the summit will be fairly friendly.

But I think the true trajectory of the relationship continues to be bad.

sense of this is that this is certainly a signal of something.

When you've got Goldman Sachs, the symbol of American capitalism, issuing Chinese debt in Renminbi in the middle of a US-led war against Iran, it has to be a signal of something.

But what exactly...

I've been puzzling over.

My sense is that it is not yet a sign of the decline of the US dollar or anything as drastic as that.

The US dollar is in pretty good shape.

US financial markets are just unbelievably strong.