Are the US and China about to end their trade war?

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0:06Anthony:How did the United States build the largest soft power empire in the world with the help of some tiny metal objects? I'm Tristan Redmond, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. To mark 250 years of the United States, we speak to Roman Mars of 99 % invisible. This soft power, this influence was an incredible invention. For more, listen to The Global Story on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:00Anthony:Enough, enough. Yes, that really was a military band rendition of President Trump's favorite song, YMCA. It was recorded for us on location by none other than top sound recordist Anthony Zerker. Anthony, where on earth were you? What were the circumstances? It sounds fantastic. I was at the airport in Busan, South Korea. We had just landed on Air Force One and the South Koreans had rolled out the reddit. carpet for Donald Trump. They had that military marching band. They had a 21-gun salute. They had all these dignitaries welcoming him. When he came down the staircase, they played Hail to the Chief.

1:41The cannon shot off. And then, as you heard, this military band and their pomp and circumstance uniforms transitioned to the village people playing YMCA. I don't know if Donald Trump appreciated it, but it was indicative of the kind of attention to detail the South Koreans have had here in trying to curry Trump's favour. It's amazing, isn't it? The way country after country is trying to up the ante and how they flatter Donald Trump with all of this pomp and circumstance. Have you seen the gifts that the South Koreans gave him? It's remarkable. It is a copy of an ancient Korean crown, which is very, very shiny gold covered in gemstones.

2:21It's a huge, really, really tall crown that Donald Trump looked delighted to receive and could see no irony at all, I think, in the fact that just a couple of weeks ago, seven million Americans were on the streets on those No Kings protests because it's bright gold, it's very, very shiny, and he loves it. It was a masterstroke, I think, from the South Koreans.

2:40Anthony:The Trump circus goes east. Welcome to AmeriCast.

2:47AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir. Right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world. Oh, dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry? Of course the president supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question.

3:03Anthony:Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

3:12Anthony:It's Justin at home in South London. It's Sarah here in the BBC's Bureau in Washington. And it's Anthony in the, well, let's see, the Asia Pacific headquarters of AmeriCast, the South Korea headquarters of AmeriCast. I am in Gyeongchang, South Korea. All right. We are an expanding enterprise. No question about that. We'll get to Anthony in a second. And that is going to be the most part of what we talk about. I just want to say right at the beginning, I've been talking to Karine Jean-Pierre, the former press secretary for Joe Biden. She's got a book out, key figure, of course, in the Biden administration, also very close to Kamala Harris.

3:51Anthony:She said some interesting things about where the Democrats should go next. So there's all sorts of stuff about her and what she thought about Biden, what she thought about Harris. And we do get to that. But I know from what you tell us, you AmeriCasters, is that what interests you is what happens next to the Democratic Party. She's got some quite interesting views on that. Anyway, before we get to that, Anthony, tell us about your trip. Well, yeah, I joined up with Donald Trump in Tokyo, Japan. That was in the second leg of his trip to Asia. The first one was in Malaysia, where he presided over a normalization, a ceasefire agreement between Thailand and Cambodia.

4:30Add another peace deal to Donald Trump's growing list that he likes to tout. In Korea, he met with the new prime minister, the first woman prime minister of Japan, Sanae Takeuchi, and she gave Donald Trump a golf bag and a putter that belonged to Shinzo Abe, who was the former prime minister of Japan who was assassinated, who was a close friend of Donald Trump's. also nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is what people tend to do these days when they're trying to curry favor with Donald Trump. Had a big dinner. They had a rally on an aircraft carrier together. It was quite a spectacle.

5:09You're a long, long way away, Anthony, with a pretty killer time difference, I think, don't you, of about, what, 12, 13 hours from where I am here. Have you seen some great stuff? You've been posting some photographs that look pretty spectacular. The flight that we had from Japan to here in South Korea was actually spectacular. The Air Force One, it looked like it took a bit of a scenic route. It actually occurred by and flew right over the top of Mount Fuji. So we had an amazing view of Mount Fuji as we were coming by. And then as we got into South Korean airspace, we had about four F-16, Air Force and Marine F-16s accompanying us right on the wing of Air Force One.

5:53This is something that started with the Saudis on Donald Trump's Mideast trip at the beginning of this year. They had some F-16s and Donald Trump talked about how great it is. So now it seems like every time Trump visits a foreign country, there is a military jet escort. So I guess now the Americans are going to do it as well. But it provided some pretty remarkable views out the window as we were coming into Busan for our landing in South Korea.

6:18Anthony:And has Donald Trump himself come to the back of the plane at all? He did. He actually came to the back of the plane on that trip. He spoke with those of us in the press pool for about 20 minutes. I got to ask him a variety of different questions. I asked him a little bit about Mideast peace and the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that seems to be a bit in jeopardy. And he still expressed optimism that the ceasefire would hold and that Hamas would ultimately lay down its arms. I asked about Hurricane Melissa, which is hitting Jamaica, just hit Jamaica. And he said the United States was willing to support Jamaica, would be sending aid.

6:58And then I also asked him about the big Xi Trump meeting tomorrow, our time here in South Korea. And Donald Trump expressed optimism. He said a lot of groundwork had already been laid in meetings by his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, and that he wasn't going to that meeting cold. He knew what was going to happen and he thought that good things were going to result.

7:21Anthony:Does he like you, Anthony? I just want to because he hasn't always had a good relationship with the BBC, has he? But he must see quite a lot of you on these trips. Do you get on with him? Is there a bit of joshing there? Yeah, you know, he seems pretty friendly. He's he always there was one time when we were in the Middle East where he brisked a little bit at a question. I asked him about Vladimir Putin and whether the Russians were taking negotiations with Ukraine seriously. And he asked me, you know, where I was from. And I said, BBC, and he kind of scoffed. But but, yeah, you know, I asked him about the golf club he got from Takachi.

7:54and he said he was really appreciative of the golf club and he enjoyed playing golf with Shinzo Abe and that it was a touching gift. He generally has been in a good mood for this entire trip, although he did have dinner earlier this evening with about seven other heads of state here for the APEC conference, and one of them was Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, who he has feuded with recently, and he seemed to be giving a bit of a cold stare across the table at Carney. So that was the one time he expressed a little bit, maybe not quite as jovial. And he's made some controversial statements, hasn't he, Anthony, on this trip?

8:32First of all, a couple of days ago, saying he did want to run again in 2020 for a third presidential term. And that said of all sorts of speculation about what he meant, about how he was going to get around the constitutional bar on that. And now, on the course of the same trip, he's come right out and said he cannot run again for a third term. Is that right? Yeah, he walked that back on Air Force One today, and he had said that he thought it would be too cute to do the idea that maybe he could not run as vice president and be elevated to president. I think he understands that the obstacles to becoming president for a third term would be pretty great.

9:11It's pretty clear in the Constitution that he can't do it. But I think he does like needling, maybe trolling people on the left with it. And it also keeps him relevant, right? If we're thinking about maybe Trump will be around for another seven years, it gives him a sort of power and influence that a second term president who, you know, serving out the last few years of his term and everyone's trying to think who the next president will be. It helps him avoid that. Now, he's changed his tone about President Xi a bit recently, hasn't he? Because this meeting that's coming up is the big highlight, really, of this trip to the Far East.

9:48And a few weeks ago, he was posting on Truth Social how terrible the Chinese were, how he was going to up tariffs, how appalled he was with rare earths law that the Chinese had passed, saying that if you wanted to export anything that had even a tiny amount of rare earth minerals from China, there were going to be export controls on those. And he went from being furious about that to more recently talking about the very well-respected President Xi and that kind of thing as he's softening his tone as they move towards these trade discussions. And he sounded pretty optimistic about it all. And whilst he was at an event of that Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in South Korea, he actually said that he really does think the U.S.

10:31is going to get a good deal with China. The President Xi of China is coming tomorrow here and we're going to be, I hope, making a deal.

10:38Anthony:I think we're going to have a deal. I think it'll be a good deal for for both. And that's really a great result. You know, that's better than fighting and going through all sorts of problems and, you know, no reason for it. I think it's going to be a great deal for both. So I'll be meeting him tomorrow. A lot of people are interested. They're also interested in what we're doing, but they're interested in that. I can tell you a lot. The world is watching. And I think we'll have something that's very exciting for everybody. Donald Trump really does seem optimistic about this meeting. I think he feels like China is going to start buying soybeans again, which is something they haven't done recently, which is really hurt American farmers.

11:17It sounds like there might be a finalized deal on TikTok and handing some control over to American interests, maybe something on fentanyl. Certainly the restrictions on rare earth minerals being exported from China appears to be easing or not even implemented whatsoever. And Donald Trump, for his part, has already backed away from these 100 percent tariffs he was threatening to putting on China. So it is there's a sense of optimism, not only with Donald Trump, but in the stock market, which is booming as he likes to know over and over again. And so it feels like tomorrow might be a breakthrough.

11:57But the Chinese and Xi, they drive a hard bargain. You know, they are going to be coming in and they don't want to give Donald Trump an easy win. So nothing is decided until they sit in the room and reach those agreements. But it feels like the United States and China might be on a precipice of something a little more normalized.

12:15Anthony:But it's worth saying, isn't it, that there are plenty of people in MAGA world who are upset about that and will not react very kindly to a wider deal with China, particularly one that gives more in American advanced technology, particularly semiconductors, computer chips, that at the moment they're restricting, that if they give the very best ones to China, the feeling is that China then gets a march on the rest of the world and it allows them to do all sorts of things in the longer term that are not in America's interest. And also, to an extent, over Taiwan. You know, how strong is Trump going to be about Taiwan?

12:50Anthony:I mean, you do pick up, don't you, a sort of sense of unease as well about a deal that Trump might, in the enthusiasm of the moment, you know, with YMCA ringing in his ears, just be tempted to me. Yeah, that is a very real possibility. There are China hawks. There are people who view China as a, you know, communism line, communist influence in the world within Donald Trump's administration. Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, used to be a China hawk, although he tends to match whatever Donald Trump is saying at this point. And there are people within the conservative movement. I mean, I can remember going back five, six, seven years to CPAC, the conservative conference, having a very decided anti-China bent with concerns about Chinese ownership of American land or American businesses and the malign influence that that might have.

13:39So I think Donald Trump has to walk a fine line. But what he is sensitive to is that every time he rattles the economic sabers against China, every time it looks like things might devolve into a trade war, things might go south. the American stock market tanks, drops hundreds of points, drops percentage points within just a matter of hours. And I think he knows that if he does not try to find some way of working with China, that it could have long term disruptive effects on the American economy. And no doubt, if he gets the kind of deal that they've been hinting at over the weekend, and the Treasury Secretary Scott Besson has been, you know, teasing us some of the deals about like, as you were saying, Anthony, for instance, the rare earth mineral restrictions being paused for at least a year and the Chinese starting to buy soybeans again.

14:29It's only going to get us back to where we were, isn't it, before Donald Trump started this with the tariffs. You can see what he's done with other countries. And in fact, compared to what's happened with South Korea just this week as well, he's signed a deal that's very, very advantageous for America with South Korea. And so that with a threat of tariffs, he has forced the South Koreans to do a bunch of things that Donald Trump wanted. With the Chinese, because every time he's up to tariffs, they have also upped the ante by doing things like restricting exports or also putting reciprocal tariffs on, stopping buying American goods.

15:04All you're talking about is Donald Trump will ease the tariffs if they ease their countermeasures and we'll end up back on a level playing field, won't we? Yeah, that's exactly right. Throughout this trip, starting in Malaysia and through Japan and into South Korea, it has been the United States operating from a position of strength. All of these leaders in all of these countries have tried to find ways to appeal to Donald Trump, to win him over, whether it's playing YMCA or giving him a putter or letting him broker a peace deal on their soil. They're trying to stroke Donald Trump's ego. And China doesn't play that way.

15:42I mean, just to illustrate stroking the ego, let me read to you the menu from the lunch that Donald Trump had today with President Lee of South Korea. It was billed as Korean flavors meet American spirit, celebrating the enduring friendship through taste. And the first course was reminiscing the success story of New York. Korean seafood meets Thousand Island dressing, a salad of shrimp, scallops and abalone with tossed with autumn herbs and a classic Thousand Island dressing. Then he had Korean platter of sincerity with U.S. beef, side dishes of kimchi and mini beef patties with ketchup. And then the final, the piece de resistance was the dessert, the Peacemaker's dessert, golden citrus dessert with gold adorned brownie and seasonal fruit served with buckwheat tea.

16:31So that gives you a taste literally of what these countries were trying to do. The Tokyo Tower in Tokyo was red, white and blue when Donald Trump came in with a gold top on it. I mean, it was almost a little, you know, nausea inducing what some of these countries are doing. But China doesn't operate that way. And China, Xi is going to be meeting with Donald Trump at an airport. No glamour, no glitz, no currying to favour, just two superpowers trying to figure out a way to work together.

17:02Anthony:Yeah. And when it comes to the hard graft of that relationship, there are obviously some difficult things. We've talked about trade, but it's not just trade, is it? But it's also, well, crucially, I suppose, Taiwan and its future and the pressure, the increasing pressure that China seems to be putting on Taiwan. But also, I was fascinated by this, Anthony, because he was asked about Jimmy Lai, wasn't he? He was this British businessman, been in prison for several years now, Hong Kong newspaper magnate, freedom campaigner, who the Brits had been trying to get out for a long time. And he kind of I was surprised that he sort of ran with it in a way and said, yeah, I might talk to Xi about it.

17:43Anthony:And we might have some sort of progress, which I just don't associate with Donald Trump. What do you think's going on there, if anything? I'm not sure either. That was surprising. And maybe it's Donald Trump sees this as a way of gaining some sort of advantage, some sort of leverage on China by hitting them on human rights. Funny thing was, he was asked on Air Force One today what he thought about Taiwan and if he was going to talk to China about Taiwan. And Trump kind of brushed it off. He said, Taiwan is Taiwan, whatever that means. But he didn't want to try to push China on that. So it's a kind of a confusing game that Trump is playing on whether he wants to be confrontational with China, whether he wants to try to back off on things and where he is drawing the lines and where he is deciding to put a spotlight versus where he doesn't really want to engage.

18:31If you look at his negotiating style, I think what he's very likely to do with this meeting is start off with a long list of complaints about the way China is operating, about where he sees the trade balance between the two countries being unfair, any of the measures that they've introduced recently. And he'll have a whole screed of things that he thinks that China are doing that are bad. And so he can, you know, add human rights abuses or things like that to that list so that he's kind of berating Xi with everything that the U.S. doesn't like and what it wants to get from China as their initial starting point.

19:05And then he'll back down from that and they'll agree a few points and he'll let some of it go. So it could be that he's just looking to add to that list without necessarily wanting to put Taiwan on it, because we've heard very little from Donald Trump ever really sort of supporting Taiwan and its position. So maybe he just doesn't want to go there, but he needs to find a whole whole list of stuff to try and hit Xi over the head with to open the meeting.

19:27Anthony:We will let Anthony go, won't we, Sarah, because otherwise he'll be he'll be completely he'll be a basket case. Too late. We can't have basket cases following the president around on Air Force One. um anthony go to bed or or i don't know is it morning is it evening do you even know it's approaching midnight i am going to bed now because it'll be an early start tomorrow and a long journey home okay talk to you soon see y 'all later righty ho let's turn back to the future of the democrats which is something we talk about i think we talk about almost every podcast uh at the moment but rightly so because it is a huge subject and it's of great interest to everyone I've been talking to Karine Jean-Pierre.

20:04Anthony:Now, Karine Jean-Pierre, if you were looking at stuff during the Biden administration, will be a pretty obvious face to you. She was the face of the White House, basically. She did that job where you come into the press room every day and you face the press. So she was press secretary from 2022 to 2025. She was a senior advisor to the president as well from October 2024. So she was there. She was in the room, as it were, when decisions were being taken. And then in June of this year, she announced that she'd left the Democratic Party. She was now an independent. Though, as you'll hear, she's very much still a supporter of the party.

20:47Anthony:And she's an independent in the sense that she is outside it now, but still wants it effectively to win. She's written a book. It's called Independent. A look inside a broken White House outside the party lines. A lot of the book is about what happened with Joe Biden and what happened with Kamala Harris. But when I talked to her, I thought I'd start the other way around, as it were, with the future. What does she think of the current state of the Democratic Party? What needs to happen now? Well, what my take is, is that the party is lost. I feel as if the party has lost their soul. One of the things that concerned me very early on in the Trump administration was when the administration was trying to push forward some very unqualified nominees.

21:33And you had Democrats in the Senate who basically rubber stamped Trump's nominees, which for me sent a signal that they were giving up their power. Project 2025 was loud and clear. And the fact that they were not prepared for a Trump administration the moment he stepped in was concerning. And now what I'm seeing even more that's more concerning is there's just continues to be no fight. And because mentioning them doesn't hold test well, they're throwing communities under the bus. And so that's concerning because we're supposed to be the Democratic Party, supposed to be a big tent party.

22:13Anthony:That's interesting. Who is being thrown under the bus in your view? When you think about the LGBTQ community, when you think about migrants and immigrants and you don't see enough fight and they're silent, you know, they're not really coming up with a strategy. And it is very much, oh, okay, that doesn't poll test, you know, well, oh, the country's afraid of migrants. So therefore, we're not going to be mentioning them or fighting for them. Oh, you know what, the LGBT community, we can't, we really can't support the LGBT community because no one wants, you know, some of the policies or some of the issues or some of the freedoms that the community should be having.