Trump scores four big wins with Xi, but has one big miss

President Donald Trump, our dealmaker in chief, has scored big in Asia. And not just with China’s President Xi Jinping. By wielding the strength of America’s economy, Trump is overturning globalism with fresh bilateral trade deals, record-setting direct investment in the U.S., and a path to dominate artificial intelligence (AI).

Even before his meeting with Xi, Trump was racing to reset economic security. His bilateral trade deals with Asian nations deals go a long way toward repairing damage done after the West naively let China into the World Trade Organization’s no-tariff zone way back in 2001.

Then in Busan, South Korea, Trump got action on soybeans, rare earths, fentanyl restrictions and maybe even increased oil sales to China.

Xi had to feel the walls closing in. America has allies and friends. China’s got Russian President Vladimir Putin.

TRUMP VISITS SOUTH KOREA AS HE ATTEMPTS TO SECURE BILLIONS IN INVESTMENT

The U.S.-China deal is actually a one-year truce that will avoid the 100% penalty Trump threatened to slap on China. The question is whether China will follow through. Often they don’t. No matter. With $525 billion of exports to the U.S. in 2024, America is by far China’s largest trading partner, which gives Trump leverage if China tries trade war tactics again.

Here are Trump’s four wins and one big miss:

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Turning the tables on rare earth minerals

Withholding sales of processed rare earths has been China’s sharpest trade weapon, roiling markets and threatening factories across the globe. Xi agreed to open up, but Trump is playing the long game to cut China’s market share by boosting global production from friends and allies.

Faster than kids grabbing candy on Halloween, Trump signed production pacts for critical minerals pacts with several nations in including Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Japan. “In about a year from now we’ll have so much critical minerals and rare earths that you won’t know what to do with them,” Trump commented during the visit of Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The deals are the brainchild of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The BBC called the rare earth deals, “a turning point step in the US-China rivalry.”

A win for farmers on soybeans

TRUMP’S FOCUS TURNS TO JAPAN AND SOUTH KOREA AS ASIA TRIP CONTINUES

At $12 billion per year, soybeans are by far the biggest U.S. agricultural commodity exported to China. Which is why China stopped buying U.S. soybeans in May. That’s over, as Xi pledged to catch up this year and then buy 25 million tons annually, which is close to the 27 million tons bought in 2024. Iowa Republican Rep. Zach Nunn told The Iowa Dispatch it was “an important first step.”

AI chips

Calm down. Yes, we want NVIDIA, for example, to sell AI chips to China. Just not the very best ones. “We’re not talking about the Blackwell,” Trump clarified. Here’s the deal. Sales = profits = investment = dominant global market share = beating China. The Biden administration tried to just limit U.S. sales, but that was a fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to beat China in AI.

TRUMP CLAIMS ASIA TOUR RETURNED ‘TRILLIONS’ TO US AHEAD OF CRITICAL MEETING WITH CHINA’S XI

You see, chips alone don’t determine the winner. The key is use of the whole American AI stack by developers, to include software, cloud and chips, running at speed at U.S.-owned data centers all over the world. Part of that strategy is for Chinese developers to buy and run good chips, just not the very best ones. Keep the world running the American AI stack, and China will be locked out of market share and innovations. Awesome.

Direct investment in the USA

This is phenomenal. South Korean money will restore the Philadelphia shipyard. Japanese money will support critical new energy infrastructure from gas turbines to small modular nuclear reactors. It all started in May with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and now Asian allies are clamoring to invest in the USA.

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Trump has drawn in upwards of $18 trillion in investment commitments for everything from shipyards to AI data centers and aluminum smelting. “I think we’re going to hit $21 or $22 Trillion by the time I finish my first year,” Trump said in South Korea on Wednesday. Trump is cashing in. Call it payback for decades of unequal tariffs and shipping manufacturing overseas.

Ukraine and the China-Russia alliance

The big miss of this trip, sadly, will be Ukraine. Trump tried. “Ukraine came up very strongly. We talked about it for a long time,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. Trump said Xi is, “going to help us, and we’re going to work together on Ukraine.” Don’t hold your breath. Xi has kept the Russian war machine going with oil purchases and microelectronics. He could get North Koreans out of the Ukraine battle with one phone call. China doesn’t care if Russians and Ukrainians are dying and Europe is in a panic.

Granted, the one glimmer of hope is that the four biggest Chinese firms suspended purchases of seaborne Russian oil after Trump’s sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil. Trump chose to take on the economic issues on his Asia trip but there is still much work to do with China.

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