What Did Trump Actually Get From Xi?

American Power

The episode analyzes the recent summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, characterizing the diplomatic outcome as a 'nothing burger' that

Key takeaways

• Trump's summit behavior was described as 'kowtowing' to Xi Jinping, mirroring his previous protocol with Putin.
• China is employing a strategy of 'death by a thousand deferrals' to gain ground on Taiwan arms sales and South China Sea territory.
• The US and China are currently in a state of 'constructive strategic stability,' essentially both sides buying time for technological and economic development.
• Tech companies like OpenAI and Google face immense pressure to make generative AI profitable despite unsustainable energy and infrastructure costs.
• A significant divergence exists in AI regulation: China implements guardrails for social stability, while US political momentum favors deregulation to outpace China.

Main topics

• Trump-Xi Summit Analysis
• US-China Geopolitical Strategy
• AI Regulation and Security

Notable quotes

It's a nothing burger.

Conclusion

The episode warns that the intersection of corporate profit motives an

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:16) listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Towson, stand-up comedian, political speech writer, many other forms of writer, and most likely to make me nostalgic for the days of cough syrup with codeine being available over the counter, podcast host. That stuff was great in the winter. Speaker 2 (0:31) I'm joined, as always, by my panel of experts, and I'm so happy to say it's Speaker 3 (0:37) our full panel today. Joining us back on the podcast, you know him as Mr. Global, Matt Randolph, Master... Master Global! Speaker 2 (0:46) I combined them. Master. Speaker 3 (0:48) How are you feeling? Yeah, we're giving you a little extra reverence for your return from the dead. Master, how are you? Speaker 1 (0:54) Well, I feel great. I mean, I'm 11 days old now, so why wouldn't I? I'm much younger than I was the last time you saw me. I Speaker 3 (1:02) like that this is like a sort of Buddhist rebirth for you, a new life. You've gone around the wheel of Samsara with all the wisdom that you had before. Forgive me to any Buddhists for... probably misusing these terms or oversimplifying, but I like that you're a reborn, but you're the same man, but with a youth and the same wisdom. Speaker 1 (1:20) For sure. Speaker 3 (1:21) Well, it's great to have you back. Very nice to see your pixelated face again here on our podcast recording call. And I can't wait to dive back into stressful topics with you once again. Speaker 1 (1:35) Oh, no, it's great. Speaker 3 (1:37) If you haven't, to our listeners, Matt gave a really candid account of everything that happened to him and how his interactions with the American health care system have given him a lot of perspective on both the health care system and his own life. And I highly recommend watching it on his TikTok YouTube shorts, not YouTube shorts, YouTube longs, et cetera. So, yeah. I Speaker 1 (2:03) think Speaker 3 (2:03) they just call Speaker 1 (2:04) that YouTube. Speaker 3 (2:04) They just call that YouTube. Oh, yeah. I've never seen longs anywhere. YouTube Shorts XL, I think it's called. Speaker 2 (2:12) It's the longer shorts. Speaker 3 (2:13) You know how there's YouTube shorts, but they're sideways and they can be as many minutes as you want? Speaker 1 (2:19) Yeah. Speaker 3 (2:20) They should come up with a term for that, but that's what he did. It's called a Speaker 1 (2:24) video. It's called a YouTube video is what they call it. Oh, I Speaker 3 (2:26) like that. That has a nice ring to it. It's OG. We should start saying that, yeah. A YouTube video. I'll try to remember that. Well, check out his YouTube video, I guess. And welcome back from the dead. I'm so happy to have you here on the podcast. A reborn man joining us, as you may have heard in the background already. Of course, as always, the other member of our panel, our expert. Oh, I didn't say this because Matt was our expert on energy in the industry and all that. And our expert, of course, they know. They know who he is. They tuned in for his return. And our expert on foreign policy and the military. Mr. Chad Scott. Chad, how's it going? It's Speaker 2 (3:07) going well, but I do not miss the days of codeine cough syrup because I am allergic to codeine. So I was not allowed to have that. But with that being said, I do miss the nostalgia days of getting Robitussin for everything. So not sponsoring this podcast, but Robitussin will Speaker 3 (3:28) fix everything. Speaker 1 (3:28) We're Speaker 2 (3:29) going Speaker 1 (3:29) to blank that out with generic cough syrup. Speaker 2 (3:31) Yeah, exactly. But I'm glad to be here and I'm glad Matt's back. Yeah, Speaker 3 (3:35) I don't mean to romanticize the opioid epidemic, but the Sacklers really ruined it for everyone. It was the best thing for a cold. That's all I'm saying. You lose your voice as a speaker in the winter. And we went too far. Not us. The most evil people in the world. So, speaking of the most evil people in the world, top of the line story this week. I'm editorializing. Among the worst people in the world, at a major summit, Between the US and China, worst person in the world, Donald Trump, got some big gains, let's say. I was about to engage sarcastically, but actually I want to go with Chad. Chad, can you give us a little bit of your impression? What's the takeaway from this summit? Was there really anything, what's some substance that we can take away from what happened? Speaker 2 (4:23) Well, there's really two words that I think of. One I use often, and it's nothing burger. But the second one is kowtow, which is actually a Chinese word. Speaker 1 (4:33) And Speaker 2 (4:34) basically, it meant in China's imperial court that you would kneel and press your forehead to the floor as if to bow to the emperor. And back in 1793, Britain refused to do that. But in 2026, the word obviously means something different to Americans. But it is very much what Trump did when Xi Jinping arrived. He basically kowtowed directly to... the authoritarian leader of China. And just before I get into some of the policy, a lot of what China deals in is in protocol. When you have the entrance into a country, there's a protocol that happens and how a leader is treated really, really makes a difference to how the rest of the meeting is going to happen. So when Trump landed in Beijing in May. Xi Jinping did not meet him at the plane. He sent the vice president. Trump didn't see Xi Jinping until the next morning in Tiananmen Square. So basically, Xi made Trump wait overnight before he had an audience with him. But when Xi landed at Joint Base Andrews last week, Trump was standing at the bottom of the stairs like a toddler waiting for his dad to come home. And presidents never do that, with the exception of one other time in Trump. And it was when he did the exact same thing for Putin. in Alaska, standing at the bottom. But you would not see that from Mark Carney. You would not see that for anyone else. The only other time that Trump has done that was with the Pope. And that's usually, that's a traditional protocol. The Pope usually gets the honors of being met at the airbase. But it really set the terms of the summit leaning heavily towards Xi Jinping holding all the cards. And China warned Washington that They would shelve the entire summit if certain things in the protocol realm weren't agreed to, as well as some predetermined policies like the Taiwan arms sales. If we went forward with the $14 billion in Taiwan arms sales that is actually approved by Congress and Trump is holding up, they would have canceled the summit. And Trump did not want that. So there's this notion that Trump, sorry, I got a phone call just now. Through my computer. Weird. Anyway, so. Speaker 2 (6:49) Yeah, so basically what happened from the policy standpoint is Xi Jinping immediately pressed the U.S. to oppose Taiwan independence. And to Speaker 1 (7:00) his credit, Trump did not cave on Speaker 2 (7:02) Taiwan. I will say there was a deep concern that he was going to have some sort of Iran leverage thrown in his face where China would say, I will help you out with Iran. All you need to do is say I oppose. Speaker 2 (7:18) Taiwanese independence. Traditionally, America's stance is we have a status quo of self-determination for Taiwan, that we just want them to maintain what we have always maintained. We do have a one China policy, but if there can be this step taken for China where we say we oppose Taiwanese independence, it will... That is a major step for China. And if that's all it takes and perhaps China flexes on Iran and gets the Strait of Hormuz open, I was very concerned that that was something Trump was going to cave on and he did not. So what we're seeing now with Taiwan is this death by a thousand deferrals. China's strategy is now becoming incremental where they don't need Trump to announce some concession on the airplane on the way back from China. All they need to do is just get smaller delays, postpone the arm sales, have exercises canceled or shortened as they did when it came to South Korea. And that's something that they're doing. They're getting these incremental gains out of Trump and Trump is getting very little out of it. When I say we got very little out of it. There really wasn't anything meaningful. Yes, we had both countries got better tariff treatment on roughly 30 billion in non-sensitive goods going each way. China pledged to buy 10 more metric tons of U.S. coal in 2027 and 2028, which is always awesome. Nothing like having coal still be a thing we're selling and burning. But here's the thing. We've talked about this type of stuff before. We have had China promise to buy $17 billion in farm goods outside of soybeans. They've bought only $3.9 billion. So what China is realizing is they just got to give Trump the headline. They just got to say, hey, we will definitely buy $36.5 billion of farm products, which is what they said they would do in 2020. Speaker 2 (9:21) But as of right now, they've only bought $4.65 billion. So Trump gets his headline and China just can do nothing about it. So there were some other smaller things. We had the codification of the Board of Trade and the Board of Investment. Speaker 1 (9:35) The Atlanta Zoo is getting two pandas. Speaker 2 (9:37) I mean, that's a good thing, I suppose. And then there's this new dialogue, which is... I just don't like Speaker 3 (9:43) Matt's least worst of the week. Speaker 2 (9:45) Yeah, Matt's like, damn it, that was my least worst of the week. Alabama's getting pandas. No, but this idea of superintelligence, and we'll talk briefly about AI here in a bit, but a lot of the important stuff, like the stuff on the rare earth, there's no movement. Things we actually need. Things on dealing with denuclearization in North Korea or even having a trilateral nuclear agreement with the Russians, no movement there. We had no movement on... Any of the stuff that is regarding Iran, we had no movement on Taiwan, which is a good thing, in my opinion, because I think that Trump would have ended up having movement in the wrong direction. But there were certain things that were very much flexes on Trump when and they were subtle. For instance, when Xi Jinping came here and was discussing all of these things with Trump and they had the state dinner and stuff, China was flexing on. the Philippines, which is a treaty to ally to the US. They were conducting blockade measures against certain Philippine islands in the second Thomas Shoal, which is something that we have consistently been a defender of, but suddenly the United States didn't care when Xi Jinping was here and Xi Jinping decided, I'm going to move the chessboard or the pieces on the chessboard here. Trump doesn't want to embarrass himself. He doesn't want to embarrass me. So I'm going to take this time to... try to take some more territory in the South China Sea. And now China is saying their control extends 24 nautical miles further than what it did before. And Trump didn't say a thing about this. So on the same day, Xi was getting toasts from Trump and getting handshakes and really not making any deals worth anything. He was squeezing our ally in the Philippines. So this is a very calculating leader and he knows what he's doing. That's why I say there was a nothing burger in the policy realm. We really didn't get a whole lot out of it. But Trump absolutely seemed like the junior partner here. And he kowtowed to Xi Jinping. Speaker 3 (11:52) And so a lot of these, you know, saying not that much movement in the policy department, a lot of these seemingly aesthetic signifiers, you're saying they're pretty meaningful. You think this is this is a pretty new. Important takeaway here, or at least one of the important takeaways here is that, you know, this isn't just pageantry for the sake of impressing people. This is a very specific and deliberate way of controlling the narrative around Trump. Speaker 2 (12:17) Well, there's there's two sides to that. I think it you just have Trump loving the idea of. The authoritarians working together, they can divvy up the world, whether it's Putin, Xi or Trump, the three major powers so-called, although, again, I don't think. And everyone has long since Speaker 3 (12:36) figured out to play into that. I mean, everyone who wants every authoritarian has long since figured to flatter that instinct. Speaker 2 (12:42) Absolutely. But there is a there is an aspect that is it is expected from China. That is how they play ball at the leadership level. They, they have this expectation of the protocol of the pageantry. So them doing this, the Trump administration doing this is very much on brand for what you traditionally would do for China. The problem is, is the optics for the American people are really bad. Basically, Trump is throwing a lavish taxpayer-funded dinner flanked by several billionaires. I mean, Elon Musk was there, Jeff Bezos. There was a tea party the next day that was like, it was just the most opulent tea party. He spent money to show off our military in a military review, only to get the weakest of deals. I mean, we have a middle America paying almost $4.50 a gallon for gas, $6.50 a gallon for diesel, probably more. Matt Riley knows better than I do. Speaker 2 (13:38) groceries or hell, everything is expensive. And here's Donald Trump not only hosting, but practically fawning over an authoritarian leader who is our primary geopolitical rival on the world stage. Only 12 % of Americans have any confidence in Xi Jinping as a leader. And among Republicans, his own party is just 10%. We have 68 % of this country have a bad taste towards China. And so countering China is one of the few strong bipartisan stances we have. And Donald Trump. is blowing that entire stance up by presenting Xi Jinping with a statue of a bald eagle while his party runs anti-communism ads around the country. So the cognitive dissonance within MAGA is unbelievable, where they have to square these two positions where you have Donald Trump who campaigned anti-China, who now campaigns anti-communism, but now absolutely is falling over himself to impress. the leader of the Chinese Communist Party in China and is trying to figure out how to make himself feel like this authoritarian while flat out ignoring the American people. I mean, Speaker 1 (14:44) Matt, do you have any thoughts on that at all? I was so fascinated because Chad does use the word nothing burger quite a bit. And so I was looking up the origin of it. Is it Chinese? That'd be amazing. Speaker 2 (15:01) No, Speaker 3 (15:02) I think it's Macca. Speaker 1 (15:03) The Speaker 2 (15:04) earliest Speaker 1 (15:04) known documented use of the word nothing burger was by celebrity gossip columnist Luella Parsons in 1953. Speaking about actor Farley Granger, she said he would be a nothing burger without producer Samuel Goldberg. I Speaker 2 (15:22) got Speaker 1 (15:22) a little sidetracked, I admit. Oh, Speaker 2 (15:25) we were talking about China. Speaker 1 (15:27) Oh, I know. I know. Speaker 3 (15:29) I'm just helping you get back up, Arsh. Speaker 1 (15:32) And diesel is $6.45 a gallon. Thank you. I Speaker 2 (15:35) was too Speaker 1 (15:36) pessimistic. Speaker 3 (15:39) You were close. Speaker 1 (15:42) Yeah. I was. Yeah. What did he say? I said $6.50, but you were close. It was the other day. It was a couple of days ago. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 3 (15:50) We're recording this on Tuesday night, so we're correct. Wherever you're listening to this, if you're correcting us, it's because of that. We're correct. Speaker 1 (16:00) I was hoping it had like some mysterious origin that would be really cool from like, you know, Europe or something. But no, it was Hollywood, of course. My Speaker 3 (16:08) memory of it joining the recent, like the public consciousness, the lexicon was that it was a maybe, I want to say the Trump impeachment. I'm not currently Googling this. I'm recording a podcast. But I, that's, you know, I'm focused and present. I believe it was either the impeachment or the Mueller report or some, oh, it's going to turn out to be a big someone said on Fox or some conservative news talking head pundit said it's going to turn out to be a big nothing burger. And that was like at the height of Twitter hashtags. So nothing burger became a huge hashtag. That's my memory. And if I'm wrong, I will learn about that personally later. Speaker 1 (16:54) Well, I can tell you my super intelligence that I have on my supercomputer. It's adding super to things. It was reintroduced during the first Trump administration, but it doesn't give me specifics. So super intelligence agrees with super nat. Speaker 3 (17:10) Yeah, it sounds like I had more specifics, actually. Speaker 1 (17:13) Were they Speaker 3 (17:14) correct? Hard to say. Speaker 3 (17:22) I hope that the listeners find me vindicated in the future. I do have a question about the PR aspect of all this, though, which is. You were talking about, you know, this is a lot of pomp and circumstance. This is a lot of I mean, you mentioned Trump campaigning anti-China, anti-communist. This is a far cry from the Trump of 2015. It's pretty hard to put yourself in that headspace now. But just the rhetoric around China was so different at the time. It's kind of fascinating to hear a man who invented a new way to pronounce the word suddenly be so fawning. Yeah. A man who found a misogynistic way to say the name of a country is now fawning for their leader that 10 % of Americans, 11 % of Americans express, as you said, approval of or trust in as a leader. But here's a missing piece of the PR arrangement is, I believe it was big on Chinese television. Were U.S. networks even covering this? Are we are we now just creating CCP propaganda? Speaker 2 (18:25) Well, I think so. It's interesting because I think the the press pool for the coverage of China, because China's leadership press pool has a different requirement, they were able to circumvent the ban. Speaker 2 (18:41) So here's the thing. People were like, wait, the press pool was at the UN. How did they do that? Well, the UN issues press pool stuff. Same thing with China. China grants NBC, CBS, all these same things. So when Trump banned press pool, it didn't ban it for Xi Jinping. So they could still, he was there and he wasn't going to be embarrassed. Trump wasn't going to embarrass him. So they were allowed. So that's why that was still happening. And I do believe that. within that same time span, they allowed them to return. To the White House. Yeah, to the White House. And you talk about the communism thing. He was running anti-communism ads while Xi was there. Speaker 1 (19:19) Like, Fox News Speaker 2 (19:22) was going live to Trump and Xi, and then they would cut to commercial, and