Trump, Hegseth, Musk: Maga lands in Beijing
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Guardian.
What does China want from Trump during his visit?
Today, what does China want from Trump?
Let's travel back in time to what feels like a lifetime ago, 2017. A freshly inaugurated Donald Trump arrives in Beijing and steps out of a stretch limit. A military band starts up. Happy children wave American flags. And throughout his trip, China pulls out all the stops to give Trump the kind of treatment he drools over.
No expenses spared to show him a good time and give him the kind of pageantry which we all now know that he really enjoys. Every effort is made to make him feel special. They gave him a private tour of the Forbidden City, which is quite rare. They took him into rooms... in this ancient imperial palace that US presidents have not stepped into before. The carpet under his feet is almost always red. Back then, China really wanted to impress Trump.
How did Trump's 2017 visit to Beijing differ from 2026?
Trump was this kind of unknown quantity who China was keen to build a good relationship with.
Fast forward to 2026 and Trump is back in China. Same city, same leaders, same carpet. Very different world. In the nine years since his last visit, we've had a U.S.-China trade war.
It's going to make us a much stronger, much richer nation.
COVID-19.
That name gets further and further away from China as opposed to calling it the Chinese virus.
Trump losing power, then getting it back again. A lot of conflict. Another U.S.-China trade war. On Wednesday evening Beijing time, Trump stepped off Air Force One, Elon Musk in his entourage, to start a visit that is expected to be all business.
We're in a very turbulent geopolitical moment and so it's coming at a very delicate moment.
What are the implications of the US-China trade war on this meeting?
Kind of China is going into this meeting with a slightly stronger posture and there's kind of less of a sense that Trump can be wooed and more of a sense of this is a businessman who we need to do a deal with.
From The Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today on Focus, Trump's back in Beijing.
Amy Hawkins, you're The Guardian's Sina China correspondent, and you will be reporting on Trump's visit for us from Beijing. And it's been nine years, nearly a decade, since Trump travelled to China. This time around, it's a lightning visit, not much sightseeing going on. So can you tell me, what is this meeting even about?
It's a good question. I think if you'd asked me this question about a month ago when the visit was first planned for, I would say this meeting is about the trade war. So last year, Trump launched an aggressive global trade war, but one that was especially targeted at China.
China, 67%. So we're going to be charging a discounted reciprocal tariff of 34%. I think, in other words, they charge us, we charge them, we charge them less. So how can anybody be upset? They will be because we never charge anybody anything.
which risked bringing US-China trade basically to a halt. That trade war kind of reached a stalemate or a truce or whatever you want to call it in October last year when Trump and Xi met in South Korea.
Mr. President, Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the taco trade. They're saying Trump always chickens out on new tariff threats and that's why markets are higher this week. What's your response to that?
I kick out. Oh, and then I chicken out. I've never heard that. You mean because I reduced China from 145 percent that I set down to 100 and then down to another number? Six months ago, this country was stone-cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country people didn't think it was going to survive, and you ask a nasty question like that. It's called negotiation.
Obviously, in recent weeks, Trump has launched strikes on Iran, which has completely kind of upended the global economy, has launched a new war in the Middle East. There has been specific and explicit pressure on China to try and push Iran towards some kind of ceasefire with the US. And now, as much as China would rather that wasn't the case, I think Iran is going to dominate the meeting.
It has been a turbulent time in geopolitics, hasn't it, throughout Trump's second term. There's other context, isn't there?
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:09
2
What does China want from Trump during his visit?
0:09–1:14
3
How did Trump's 2017 visit to Beijing differ from 2026?
1:14–2:22
4
What are the implications of the US-China trade war on this meeting?
2:22–6:43
5
How does the geopolitical landscape affect Trump's negotiations with China?
6:43–10:27
6
What role does Iran play in the US-China discussions?
10:27–25:38