Victoria Craig

Hey, Mark.

Well, there's certainly a lot of focus on it, and there's a couple of reasons why it's being so closely watched.

The first is that this is a rescheduled meeting.

So if you remember back in March, President Trump asked to postpone, and at an Oval Office gaggle with reporters, he said the reason very plainly for the delay was, quote, very simple, I've got a war going on.

And this conflict, remember, was only about two weeks old then, and Trump and the world, frankly, was really dealing with the fallout of all of that, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz,

which, as we've been talking about, about a fifth of the world's oil and gas supplies flowed through pre-war.

So a big deal.

And that sort of leads into the second reason why we're all focused on this meeting.

And that's because China, before the war, bought most of the oil that Iran produces.

So China itself has not been unaffected by this conflict.

Well, before the original March meeting was postponed, Trump had suggested that he wanted China to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz to try to reopen it.

The administration back then said that the decision to postpone had nothing to do with China, for the most part, staying out of the conflict.

But that is part of the backdrop of all of this, as is China's foreign minister this week calling for a ceasefire between Iran and the U.S., while also saying that his country supports Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty and security.

So China, I think,

is walking a bit of a delicate diplomatic line ahead of this meeting next week with President Trump.

And we also can't forget that we do have Trump's tariff regime as another backdrop to all of this.

But as for what we can expect out of this meeting, our senior trade writer Alan Beattie says that it's likely to produce little except maybe goodwill pledges of future Chinese investment in the U.S.

Thanks, Mark.

Good morning from the Financial Times.

Today is Monday, May 4th, and this is your FT News briefing.