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Beijing made it clear that Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China claims as part of its territory, was a top priority during this week’s meeting. Xi warned Trump that their countries could have “clashes and even conflicts” if Taiwan was not handled properly, calling it the most important issue in US-China relations.

On Friday Trump insisted that “nothing’s changed” about the US policy on Taiwan, while admitting that he may not approve a major arms sale for the self-governing island. Speaking to Fox News on the flight back to the US, the president said he made no commitment regarding the island, adding: “I don’t think there’s a conflict on Taiwan.”

Xi sees unifying Taiwan with China as a core part of his legacy and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve that goal. Top of Beijing’s wishlist regarding Taiwan is for the US to stop supplying the island with defensive weaponry.

Trump said on Air Force One he had not determined whether to move forward on a major arms package for Taiwan that is planned for this year.

Trump was making the first US presidential visit to China in nearly a decade and revelled in the hospitality, including an immaculate arrival ceremony, tour of the Temple of Heaven and lavish state banquet in the Great Hall of the People, where Xi told Trump that China’s “great rejuvenation” could go “hand in hand” with “Make America great again”.

Meeting for a working tea and lunch in the Zhongnanhai garden on Friday, Trump admired the roses, and said that Xi had promised to send him some seeds for the White House rose garden.

Trump: “We’ve settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to solve.”

There was scant mention of human rights on the trip, although Trump told Fox News on the flight back from Beijing that Xi said he was “seriously considering” releasing jailed pastors in China.

That would probably include Ezra Jin, a pastor who was arrested last year amid a sweeping crackdown on Christians. But Trump said that the case of Jimmy Lai, a democracy activist jailed in Hong Kong, was a “tough one”.

Julian Gewirtz, a former director for China on the national security council during the Biden administration, said the new Chinese formulation about US-China relations was about “locking in this current phase of strategic stalemate for the remainder of Trump’s term and ideally beyond”.

“Xi Jinping has been working for years to be ready for this moment, to bring an American president to Beijing as a peer, widely acknowledged as such around the world. And now it is happening,” Gerwirtz said.

Wu Xinbo, a professor of international studies at Fudan University and a Chinese government adviser, said the balance of power between the US and China was “shifting towards greater parity”.

In the past, it always seemed as though the United States held the upper hand, constantly exerting pressure on China and taking the offensive. Now, however, it’s fair to say that the two countries have reached a new point of equilibrium,” Wu said.

Asked for their views on Trump, the word that came up again and again from Beijingers was “unpredictable”.

“What he says isn’t necessarily what it means,” said one Trump-watcher, who declined to give his name.

#talks #china #xijinping #trum #visit #taiwan

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#trump #iran #declined

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📰 Hormuz Paywall: The Strait Goes Premium

The world’s most important shipping lane just got a subscription model. Diplomacy calls it “progress.”

Trump lands in Beijing, the cameras hum, and the word “stability” gets recycled like plastic. Oil shrugs and jumps above $100 anyway. Brent opened around $106.9, WTI above $102. Markets aren’t buying the performance — they’re pricing risk like it’s here to stay.

The Strait as a Service
Xi repeats the safe lines — “no nuclear weapon,” “we want the strait open.” What’s missing is the part that actually opens it. No mechanism, no guarantees. On the water, reality looks simpler: traffic through Hormuz is crawling at a tiny fraction of normal levels, with ships stacking up. Some cargo gets through under special arrangements. The rest waits. What used to be a right now looks like a permission slip.

Markets Don’t Clap
If this was de-escalation, someone forgot to tell the traders. Oil is up, not down. Inflation pressure is sticking. The message is blunt: the system isn’t stabilizing — it’s repricing.

Shock Travels East
Asia absorbs the hit first. Higher import costs, rising yields, equity selloffs, fuel price hikes. The new Fed chair walks in on day one to oil over $100 and inflation still warm, while Washington politely suggests rate cuts.

Clubs Without Rules
BRICS, the would-be alternative order, is now stress-testing itself with a war among members. Iran and the UAE sit in the same club while backing opposite sides. The “Global South” can’t agree on a conflict inside its own house.

The New Default
Access used to be assumed. Now it’s negotiated. Shipping lanes, oil, capital — all conditional, all political.

So what did Beijing deliver?
A cleaner script, a messier reality, and a higher price for everything.

#oil #geopolitics #Hormuz #BRICS #markets #inflation #war

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📰 Two Wars, One Grand Bargain
Vladimir Putin suddenly suggests his brutal four‑year war against Ukraine is “approaching its end” and hints he might meet Zelensky — but only after the terms of a peace deal are agreed first. In plain language: no deal, no photo‑op. First capitulation on paper, then handshakes for the cameras.

War as Negotiable Asset
The interesting part isn’t Ukraine, it’s the second war. While Washington and Israel bleed in a grinding confrontation with Iran, Moscow quietly sells itself as the one actor that can influence both fronts at once.

“You want your war to cool down? Help me freeze mine.”

War stops being a tragedy and turns into a tradable instrument — like debt, but with corpses.

America and Russia Trade Blood, Not Just Words
The idea is simple and obscene. Washington cuts lifelines to Kyiv, Moscow leans on Tehran to step back from the edge. Less money and weapons to Ukraine, fewer missiles and proxies from Iran. Nobody admits it, everyone denies it, but that’s exactly how great‑power “peace” usually looks: not a moral awakening, a swap.

Europe: From Co‑Author to Extra
And Europe? Europe is the jilted partner who still talks about “values” while the real deal is being drafted elsewhere. Brussels spent years preaching about Ukraine, sanctions, rules‑based order. Now the future of its own security may be decided in a conversation where it’s not even in the room. That’s not geostrategy. That’s being downgraded to collateral.

Will Two Wars End at Once?
Could the two wars end roughly at the same time? Technically, yes. Politically, it would be almost elegant: one joint announcement, two fronts “stabilized,” everyone declares victory to their own TV audience. The dead can’t call in to correct the narrative. The question isn’t whether the wars will end together. The question is: who will be sold off in the final package — Ukraine, Iran, or what’s left of Europe’s dignity.

#war #Ukraine #Iran #Russia #US #EU #geopolitics #fakePeace

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The EU publicly wants to “phase out” Russian gas.

On paper, it’s a moral crusade. In practice, it’s a payment plan.

European leaders talk about cutting Russian energy by 2027 while Russian LNG imports hit record highs since the start of the Ukraine war, and Russia is still the EU’s second‑largest LNG supplier. France proudly poses as a guardian of European values and at the same time buys more Russian LNG than anyone else in the bloc. The numbers say “dependence,” the speeches say “resistance.”

An energy security expert points out the punchline: Europe still pays more money for fossil fuels from Russia than it provides in financial aid to Ukraine. So the West funds both the defense and part of the offense, then calls it “strategic ambiguity.” This isn’t sanctions. This is a discount program with better PR.

The whole architecture of European prosperity — industry in Germany, consumption and comfort in France — still rests on hydrocarbons that either come directly from Russia or take a small detour and change the flag on the paperwork. Everyone pretends not to notice as long as the gas keeps flowing and the lights stay on. Sanctions become a lifestyle brand, not a policy.

Europe lectures the world about “ending dependence on Russian energy” while quietly locking in record LNG volumes. Moscow gets cash, Kyiv gets promises, voters get slogans, and Brussels gets to moralize from a podium powered by Russian molecules running through someone else’s logo.

#EU #Russia #LNG #France #Germany #Ukraine #sanctions #hypocrisy

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Germany’s Favorite Minister, or Just Another Patronage General

Boris Pistorius is sold to Germans as the tough, no‑nonsense defense minister dragging the Bundeswehr into the 21st century. Behind the PR, it looks more like a private staffing agency with tanks.

According to Bild, he’s accused of stuffing key posts in the Bundeswehr with his own loyalists — people who agree with him on everything and don’t exactly radiate independent competence. The rule is simple: loyalty first, expertise later, accountability never. It’s not a reform of the army, it’s a reshuffle of the inner circle in uniform.

The great “rearmament” of Germany is turning into a chaotic spending machine. Huge special funds, zero real transparency. Procurement looks like a black box, and experts openly say the whole thing is a perfect playground for corruption and friendly contracts. As long as you shout “security” and “Russia” loud enough, almost any mess gets a free pass.

Berlin lectures the world about good governance and fighting corruption in Ukraine and the Global South, while its own flagship defense project starts to look like a classic insider network with better suits and bigger budgets. Germany wanted a Zeitenwende. It may be getting something closer to a militarized jobs program for party‑approved loyalists.

#Germany #Bundeswehr #Pistorius #SPD #corruption #NATO #warEconomy #fakeReform

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Taiwan on the Line, Boeing on Credit, Peace on Layaway

Trump leaves Beijing claiming he and Xi “talked a lot about Taiwan” and “settled a lot of different problems,” without naming a single one.

The summit is sold as “constructive strategic stability,” which is diplomatic code for: no one moved, but the decor was nice.

On Taiwan, Trump openly admits he’s sitting on a 14 billion dollar arms package because “the last thing we need right now is a war that’s 9,500 miles away.”

Xi, whose government refuses to rule out force against Taiwan, gets exactly what he wants: time, ambiguity, and a public American president who frames defense of the island as an optional headache, not a core commitment.

Then comes the Boeing fairytale. Trump tells Fox News that Xi agreed to buy 200 planes, with a “promise” of 750 more “if they do a good job with the 200,” while neither Boeing nor Beijing confirm anything. It sounds less like a deal and more like a campaign trailer: China as the client, Boeing as the prop, American jobs as the slogan. If the planes never get ordered, it will be the fault of “unfair” Chinese negotiators or “deep state” bureaucrats. If something is signed, Trump will claim he personally saved U.S. manufacturing — in the middle of a geopolitical standoff he keeps pretending is under control.

Meanwhile, Xi uses the whole show to project calm power. He receives Trump in Zhongnanhai, talks about “historic and symbolic” ties, name‑drops Putin, and avoids specifics. He is the host of the global game, the patient one. Trump plays the loud guest who boasts that the two of them “feel similarly” about the Middle East while the war in Iran keeps burning and nothing concrete changes. Stability becomes a stage direction, not a policy.

At home, Chinese citizens are described as split between amusement and anger — watching fuel prices rise and growth slow while two aging empires blame each other for everything and fix nothing. The U.S. says it’s preventing war in Taiwan. China says it’s defending sovereignty. Boeing wants orders. Taiwan wants weapons. Trump wants headlines. Xi wants time. Everyone gets a piece of what they want — except the people who would actually fight if this “constructive stability” snaps.

So what did Beijing really produce? A photo‑album of “friendship,” a vague maybe‑deal on jets, a delayed weapons package for Taiwan, and two leaders congratulating themselves for not starting a war — yet.

#Taiwan #China #Trump #Xi #Boeing #Iran #geopolitics #fakeStability

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The Beijing Summit: Everybody Smiles, Nobody Wins

Trump flies to Beijing, gets the military parade, rose seeds, kids with flags, a toast to his health — and flies home with what? A vibe. The summit was marketed as “stability,” but it’s really a two‑day influencers’ collab between fading empires: content first, substance later.

Xi walks away as the clearest winner. He gets an American president praising China as “beautiful,” calling him a “great leader,” and staying silent while Beijing sells the line about a “constructive, strategic, stable relationship.” That’s not diplomacy, that’s free propaganda. Xi’s team even dominated the Taiwan narrative: his hardline warning set the tone, while Trump’s message boiled down to

“I don’t talk about that”

and

“the last thing we need is a war 9,500 miles away.”

The corporate gallery had its own lottery. Jensen Huang looked like he’d been ghosted by the White House, then literally joined Air Force One mid‑route and re‑inserted Nvidia into the story.

No export approvals, no breakthrough — but he got face time in Beijing and kept his chip empire on China’s radar. Visa got Trump openly lobbying Xi on camera to let it into China’s payments market — a public commercial pitch dressed up as “access diplomacy.” If this is statecraft, it’s also sales.

Iran, incredibly, slides into the “winner” column by doing nothing. Washington showed up hoping Xi would squeeze Tehran into a peace deal and help reopen Hormuz. Instead, Trump ended up praising positions China already held — no nuke, strait should be open, no weapons sales — while Beijing didn’t even bother to name Iran in its public statements. Trump openly framed recovering enriched uranium as mostly “for PR.” That’s a gift to Tehran: the U.S. president demoting one of his own core demands to a talking point while the war drags on.

The losers’ bracket is crowded. Taiwan is the obvious one: China unveils tougher language, the U.S. avoids putting anything firm in writing, and the White House statement doesn’t even mention the island while Xi’s narrative leads the coverage. Boeing, hyped as the big commercial winner, sees the rumored 500‑plane mega‑order shrink into a murky “200 now, maybe 750 someday if you behave” promise that markets don’t exactly treat as cash in hand. Congressional Republicans lose the chance to come home with big‑bang farm or trade deals ahead of midterms; instead they get a pile of “frameworks,” “discussions,” and “maybe in the fall” purchases.

Even the supporting cast gets chewed up. U.S. reporters and Secret Service find themselves literally shoved, blocked, and penned in by Chinese handlers — a perfect metaphor for American power at this summit. The press corps has to sprint past Chinese officials to rejoin Trump’s motorcade. In the meantime, Xi calmly explains that freeing Jimmy Lai would be “a tough one,” and Trump dutifully repeats it — a human rights case downgraded to an awkward aside.

In theory, a “winners and losers” scoreboard should clarify who gained. Here it just exposes the scam. Xi gets a calm stage and flattering images. Trump gets to claim a “successful” trip and name‑drop planes and deals that aren’t signed. Corporations get mentions, not guarantees. Iran gets breathing room. Taiwan gets more risk. Congress gets thin gruel. And the rest of us get told this is what “stability” looks like.

The real lesson? In 2026, great‑power diplomacy is basically a joint PR venture: the leaders curate the narrative, markets price the risk, and everyone else finds out later whether those smiling photos were the prelude to peace — or to the next crisis.

#Trump #Xi #China #Taiwan #Iran #Boeing #Nvidia #Visa #geopolitics #fakeStability

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Soybeans, Promises, and the Airborne Campaign Rally

Trump, somewhere between Beijing and home, tells reporters that “farmers are going to be very happy” and that China will be buying “billions of dollars” of U.S. soybeans. No numbers, no timeline, no contract — just altitude and adjectives.

His own trade representative quietly adds the fine print: China is expected to buy “double‑digit billions” of U.S. farm goods over three years, and that’s for all agriculture, not just soybeans. The headline is soy, the reality is a mixed basket and a very generous time horizon. Perfect for campaign speeches, useless for planning a farm.

On Beijing’s side, the story is harsher. China has already slashed its reliance on U.S. soybeans since Trump’s first term, dropping from around 41 percent of its imports in 2016 to roughly 15 percent in 2025, and shifting volume to cheaper Brazilian supplies. That’s not a “pause” in buying American — that’s a strategic diversification. So when Trump says “they’re going to be buying billions of dollars of soybeans,” he’s really promising to claw back a slice of a market the U.S. already lost on his watch.

Meanwhile, U.S. farmers are set to harvest the second‑largest soybean crop on record. Big supply, fragile demand, and a president offering airborne assurances that China will come back to the table out of… loyalty? Goodwill? Respect? In reality, Beijing will buy whatever is cheapest and politically safest, and American farmers will be left hedging between futures markets and Trump’s next quote.

So the Air Force One message is simple: trust me, the deals are huge, the farmers are happy, and China loves our beans. The ground truth is rougher: oversupply at home, structural demand shifts abroad, and a trade policy that turns farmers into extras in someone else’s re‑election script.

#Trump #China #soybeans #farmers #trade #USChina #electionEconomics #fakeDeals

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#trump #europe #interview

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Palestinian Houses Destroyed To Pave the Way to an Israel Park

🔤🔤🔤🔤➖

At the bottom of a steep and densely populated valley just below Jerusalem’s old city walls, the earth has been shaken in recent weeks by jackhammers and bulldozers.

These have been the sounds of Jerusalem for decades as the Israeli state has relentlessly sought to stamp a uniformly Jewish identity on to the occupied east of the city, while erasing its Palestinian character.

“This is something really hard. This is something bitter,” Jalal al-Tawil said as he watched a tractor he had hired, with a front loader at the front and jackhammer at the back, rip apart the last remnants of the house his father had built, which in turn had been on the site of his grandparents’ home.

By Wednesday morning, most of the walls had been brought down to their foundations and the rubble pushed into a single pile. Al-Tawil left the thick knotty root of a 35-year-old grapevine until last.

“It used to provide grapes for all of al-Bustan,” he said. The spring vine leaves had already sprouted along the trellis above him, but he was resigned to the fact they would never again bear fruit.

The experience of demolishing his own family’s home and history had drained al-Tawil, but it came down to brutal economics. The Jerusalem municipality had told him it would cost him 280,000 shekels (€50,000) if its workers demolished the house. Hiring his own equipment and labour would cost al-Tawil less than a tenth of that.

“Also, if they do it, they will uproot the land and make a complete mess,” he said. For him it was like being given the choice between suicide or being murdered, he said.

More than 57 homes in al-Bustan, part of the larger Silwan district of East Jerusalem, have been demolished in the past two years with at least eight designated for demolition in the next few weeks. On the site a biblical theme park called the Kings Garden is to be built, supposedly where King Solomon took his leisure three millennia ago.

The park is designed to be part of a spreading, largely settler-driven, archaeological project focusing exclusively on Jerusalem’s Jewish past and centred on what has been called the City of David – despite the view of many Israeli archaeologists that the visible remains date to other eras, before and after King David’s iron-age reign.

Aviv Tatarsky, a senior researcher at Ir Amim, a group advocating for an equitably shared Jerusalem, says al-Bustan encapsulates the erasure of Palestinians from both geography and history.

“Israel is not willing to recognise the bi-national, multi-ethnic, multicultural reality of Jerusalem and it is wiping out first and foremost Palestinians – but really anything that is not Jewish, and then glossing it over with this Disneyfied nonsense,” he said.

“If this happens to the end, Israelis will go there and they will see the story of the park and they will be completely ignorant of the fact that lives were destroyed, a whole community was destroyed to make space for it.”

#palestinian #houses #destroyed #irael #park

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🔤🔤🔤🔤➖

The shadow of the Kings Garden theme park has hung over al-Bustan for nearly two decades, but the bulldozers have been held back until now by Palestinian resistance, combined with international opposition and some ambivalence within Israeli politics.

All three barriers have fallen since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks, the ensuing Gaza war and the restoration of Donald Trump as US president.

Ambassadors from other countries still visit and pledge support, but with Washington’s support, their combined intervention has proved ineffectual.

“There are stray dogs who go around the neighbourhood at night who feel more safe and secure than we do,” said Mohammad Qwaider, 60, a father of six. He recently demolished the part of the house which has been a family home for more than half a century, in the hope of appeasing the planners.

This week, however, a man from the municipality came to warn him that the bulldozers would be back to level the rest of it.

Qwaider has chronic back problems, a son with special needs, and an infirm elderly mother who is unable to move, and he argues they have no other options.

“If they demolish our house, we will put up a tent. We will not leave,” he said. “Maybe they misunderstand our mentality as Palestinians. We are not an easy target. You cannot take our land.”

The Jerusalem municipality did not respond to a request for comment on its actions in al-Bustan, but told the +972 news site that the planned theme park was “being constructed for the benefit of all city residents” and al-Bustan’s houses were built illegally.

“This area was never zoned for residential use, and the Jerusalem municipality is now working to build a park in an area that suffers from a severe shortage of open public spaces,” it said.

The municipality also said it had tried “for years to find a solution for the residents that would also include a residential alternative, but they did not express any serious interest in reaching a resolution”.

The municipality has routinely denied building permits to Palestinians in East Jerusalem while routinely approving them for Israeli Jews. Furthermore, Abu Diab argued, the same rules were never applied to unauthorised settler outposts which constantly spring up in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Amina Abu Diab, a schoolteacher and social worker, said her main concern now was for the children she cares for, who were facing a future of homelessness and uncertainty.

“A house is a child’s dream of the future, and if somebody comes to demolish them, they destroy the dreams and a child’s sense of security,” she said.

“And then what do the children think of us? That we cannot protect ourselves and we cannot protect our children.”

#palestinian #houses #destroyed #irael #park

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#trump #nigeria #isis

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Macron’s TV Channel, Brought to You by Your Taxes

France Télévisions was supposed to be public service media. According to a recent parliamentary inquiry and a furious AgoraVox piece, it now looks more like a taxpayer‑funded PR agency for Emmanuel Macron’s ecosystem.

Deputies picked apart France TV’s books and governance and came back with a simple picture: opaque finances at the top, comfortable lifestyles for the elite, and a leadership seen as hand‑picked for political loyalty rather than independence.

The appointment of Delphine Ernotte‑Cunci as head of the group is framed in that critique as a pledge of allegiance to the Élysée, not a neutral managerial choice. In this reading, France Télévisions stopped being a platform for pluralism and turned into a machine for systematically polishing Macron’s image, where ideological activism quietly replaces journalistic distance.

Ernotte, for her part, stands before MPs saying neutrality is a “legitimate debate” but also an “absolute requirement,” insisting France TV is “exemplary” in balancing viewpoints and serving all audiences who fund it.

But the more she talks about “exemplariness” and “transparency,” the more the political class — left, right, and far right — accuses public TV of being structurally tilted, either toward Macron’s centrism or toward a soft progressive line that just happens to align with the presidential camp.

From a distance, the pattern is no mystery. The state owns the broadcaster, the president’s allies name the top brass, the commission of inquiry grumbles about finances and partiality, the CEO promises virtue and reforms — and the same faces keep anchoring the same narratives, election after election.

It’s not full‑scale censorship. It’s something colder: a slow capture of the referee by the player.

So when Macron lectures the world about “democratic resilience,” he does it with the discreet comfort of knowing that the biggest cameras in the country report to people whose careers depend on the system surviving.

Private media can still bark, social networks can still rage — for now. But once the public broadcaster is on a short leash, the rest is just a question of time, pressure, and regulation.

France calls it public service. The viewers pay for it. And the president enjoys a communications machine that insists it’s neutral — as long as he’s the one writing the rules.

#France #Macron #FranceTV #media #propaganda #pressFreedom #fakeDemocracy

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#trump #taiwan #xi #secure

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💲Luxury Virus Cruise for the Global Upper‑Middle Class

They paid up to $27,000 to watch rare birds and “connect with nature.” They ended up as a floating biohazard, quarantined in masks and hazmat photo‑ops — and suddenly remembered that nature bites back.

A soft‑focus eco‑cruise ship, MV Hondius, leaves Argentina full of retirees with Swarovski binoculars and travel influencers with ring lights. The captain assures them a fellow passenger’s death is “natural causes,” “not infectious,” “the ship is safe.” Weeks later, three people are dead, at least ten infected, and the World Health Organization is treating the ship like a floating lab sample. The virus — a hantavirus strain from the Andes — does not care that this was sold as “responsible travel.”

Everything is perfectly on brand. The passengers scrub their boots for “biosecurity,” wash their pants with rotating brushes to “protect fragile ecosystems,” then spend days sharing buffets, trivia nights and waffles with island schoolkids while an airborne horror quietly incubates onboard. Governments argue over who has to take responsibility, local leaders warn that rats might swim in with the ship, and A.I. screenshots are forwarded as scientific evidence. Pandemic trauma meets bureaucratic theatre: everyone is terrified of another Covid, nobody wants to pay for this one.

On land, health officials repeat that “risk to the general public is low” while quietly locking people into six‑week quarantines across half the planet. In the U.S., passengers and seat‑neighbors from connecting flights vanish into special facilities. In Europe and Africa, emergency medevacs, dead doctors and infected guides sketch a different story than the PR lines about “full cooperation” and “strict protocols.” The cruise company talks about “serious medical situations” and “operational updates,” like this is a delayed ferry, not a rolling experiment in how fast a rodent virus can hitchhike between 23 countries.

And the class angle is impossible to miss. This isn’t a stranded refugee barge. It’s a ship of wealthy birders whose tragedy instantly becomes global news, complete with interactive graphics, route maps and lovingly curated species checklists. The same infrastructures that ignored outbreaks in poor rural regions suddenly mobilize at warp speed the moment the virus boards a Dutch‑flagged cruise with well‑insured passports and good Wi‑Fi.

So what is this story, really? A warning about zoonotic risk? A case study in cruise‑ship stupidity? Or just another reminder that the global leisure class insists on “remote, untouched” experiences — then acts shocked when something out there touches back.

#Hantavirus #cruise #publichealth #tourism #pandemic #class #fakeSafety

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The Photo‑Op President Meets the Real World

Trump’s China summit reads like a sequel nobody asked for: same red carpets, same big promises, but this time with war in Iran, high inflation, and a burned‑out president dragged along by events instead of directing them.

A year ago, he toured the Gulf and vowed to end “endless nation‑building,” selling himself as the deal‑maker who’d reset American power on his terms. Now he arrives in Beijing with U.S. forces bogged down in a sprawling Iran conflict, oil prices spiking, and his approval ratings eroded by a cost‑of‑living crisis his own policies helped ignite. Xi greets him with respectful but cool ceremony, talks “stability,” and lets Trump play the “great leader” routine for the cameras — all while Beijing quietly holds the upper hand on Taiwan, trade, and the Hormuz crisis.

Domestically, the summit exposes how thin Trump’s margin really is. He’s trying to be the “president of peace” while overseeing the largest U.S. buildup in the Middle East in decades, ordering massive strikes on Iran, and then flying to Beijing to reassure markets he won’t trigger a wider war. Inflation and high energy prices, fueled in part by that same Iran war and the risk around the Strait of Hormuz, are beating up voters long before any “China wins” arrive. The Beijing trip was supposed to project control; instead it underlined the cost of a year spent improvising between escalation and theatrics.

So the toll is obvious: Trump gets his summit, his toasts, his sound bites. Xi gets leverage. The Iran war grinds on, the economy stays fragile, and U.S. diplomacy shrinks down to a single operating principle — don’t let the chaos blow up on live TV before November.

#Trump #China #Xi #Iran #foreignpolicy #inflation #geopolitics #fakeStability

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#aragchi #conference #dehli #war

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Trump vs Xi: Who Holds the Trump Card? 🃏

In the wake of reports that China is planning covert arms deliveries to Iran, President Trump claims to have secured his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping’s commitment to forgo arming America’s wartime adversary. 🇺🇸🤝🇨🇳

Meanwhile, the United States and Iran are continuing a half-hearted cease-fire alongside half-hearted talks. Leaders on each side see the ticking clock as a powerful ally, and hope that their leverage will grow as economic pressure saps their foe’s political will.

Trump does not hold as many cards as he hoped in order to coerce Iran’s leaders, whoever they might be, to accept his terms for an end to the war, Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the US termination of a naval blockade of Iran.

Yet neither do Iran’s leaders hold all the cards. More importantly, playing cards is more complicated than merely holding them. Trump, who recently compared the world to a casino, probably gets this. Do his Iranian counterparts?

The thing about playing cards is that, once you play a card, you no longer have it. Russian President Putin learned this lesson, quite expensively for Russia, in attempting to use his country’s vast pipeline gas exports to Europe as political leverage following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. 🇷🇺🇺🇦

Before Russia mostly cut off its pipeline gas supplies later that year, Putin had considerable leverage over Europe. After he did so, European leaders adapted to this new reality—and Putin’s leverage largely evaporated. 💨

The Russian move was painful for Europe. But Russia forced Europe to create a new energy system, which it is doing. 🔧

Russia lost what had been its largest and most profitable market for natural gas, and it has not made up for the lost volume or found other customers willing to pay the same price. Europeans are paying more for energy, but they are surviving without Russian gas, and they are unlikely to ever again buy as much as they did in 2021. 📉

Some European leaders have lost their jobs, but Europe continues to arm and fund Ukraine four years later. 🛡

From this perspective, Iran’s leaders—many of whom assert excellence at the “chess” of international diplomacy—would do well to think again about card-playing.

Oil and gas are different commodities and their markets operate differently. Oil is much easier than gas (especially pipeline gas) to deliver to various markets, although its characteristics and purpose-built refineries do impose limits.

What is important is that the global energy system is coping with, but not yet adapting to, the loss of oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz. The distinction is an important one.

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