Sir Niall Ferguson

He likes to open really strongly.

That's all in the art of the deal.

See what the other side does.

And if it doesn't really go anywhere, he's perfectly capable of declaring victory or claiming a win and retreating.

How do you read China at this moment?

Anybody who bets against Chinese STEM is likely to lose their bet over a 10-year time horizon.

The problem is that you're also making a bet on the CCP's ability to manage Chinese economic policy and national security.

I think that the harsh reality is that despite the mood music coming out of Beijing, they still have a problem that is deflationary, that the property sector is very hard for them to fix, and they may say they're going to have a 5% growth target.

I just don't think they're going to do it.

President Trump could at some point be faced with the dilemma.

Do you accept a quiet Chinese takeover of Taiwan or do you risk World War III?

Well, I quite deliberately teed myself up with an allusion back to the Nixon administration because I do think that there is something going on there.

which is being missed by most analysts.

If you just follow the more bombastic things that the administration does, laying claim to Canada, laying claim to Greenland, laying claim to the Panama Canal, you think to yourself, it's American empire.

This is as shocking as it's been since William McKinley was president.

And the administration wants you to think that.

And that's part of the reason for trolling everybody on issues like Canada and Greenland and the Panama Canal.

But inside the Oval Office, and I think we begin to see this, their real preoccupation is with the weakness of the American position.

And there's a belief, I don't think it's right across the administration, but it's certainly in the president's inner circle that they have to reduce commitments in Europe.

Stop sending money and weapons to Ukraine, reduce commitments in the Middle East, reduce your presence in Syria and Iraq in order to focus on China, because China's the other superpower and China's a formidable antagonist.