Does Trump need China to end the war in Iran?

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0:30No bouncing between tabs. And best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. With the new Schwab Teen Investor Account, teens can gain hands-on investing experience and build positive money habits. It's an account co-owned by you and your teen, so you can monitor and engage with the account while your teen learns how to invest and manage money. Learn more at schwab.com. Donald Trump has landed in Beijing for his first trip to China since his second term began. And the stakes are pretty high.

1:08We've got talks that we'll be looking at everything from trade, artificial intelligence, relations with Taiwan. But underpinning it all is Donald Trump's really unpopular war in Iran. And that's what's going to make this trip difficult. He is under pressure at home where voters don't like it. His cabinet members are coming under pressure from Congress about the spending and the strategy. Will Donald Trump ask China to speak to its close friend and ally, Iran, about ending this war, about doing a peace deal? Could China help get the Iranians to the table? And should Donald Trump even accept their help if they offer it?

1:42Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover-up, and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump Arrangement Syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up!

2:13Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Washington Bureau. And it's Anthony, right across the table from Sarah here in Washington, D.C. At about 10 o 'clock in the morning here, so 3 o 'clock in the afternoon in London. I don't know what time it is in Beijing, actually, but whatever time it is, Donald Trump has just landed there on this big state visit to China. Sadly, neither you nor I are there with him, Anthony, but it's a big deal, isn't it? It is a big deal. This is the first trip he's taken to China since his first term. Joe Biden didn't go to China at all, so this is his first U.S. presidential trip to Beijing since Donald Trump went there during his first term.

2:49and the stakes are quite high. Often, U.S. presidents go there to talk about military, national security kind of things or to pressure the Chinese into changing their economic system or, you know, looking for some kind of fundamental reforms. It seems like Donald Trump's more likely to go there and do a bunch of economic deals than push for some kind of major change. Well, yeah. If you look at the people he's bringing along with him, a selection of various corporate leaders from across the United States. The head of NVIDIA, Elon Musk, is going to be there, the head of some financial companies, the head of Boeing.

3:25It is essentially, it seems like, at least by Donald Trump's perspective, this is a business deal-making trip. But the reality is there's so much more to U.S.-China relations than just opening up China to new business deals. There's the Iran war, of course. There's trade. A year ago, it seemed like the U.S. and China They were on the verge of a trade war with tariffs up over 100 percent. And they got walked back in the ensuing months and then kind of put on ice during that Trump-Gi meeting at the airport in South Korea. But that still looms over these negotiations, plus Taiwan, plus national security issues, plus AI and regulating AI.

4:07There's a lot of stuff they could talk about. The question is, what will they say and what will come out of this, if anything? Yeah, I was fascinated looking at the list of chief executives who were on the plane with Donald Trump, trying to work out what that meant for his priorities. And as you say, it was people like Tim Cook from Apple, Elon Musk, the head of Boeing, because we know for sure that they want to get China to buy more Boeing planes. And it was being reported that Jensen Wang from NVIDIA had not been invited. And that was really fascinating because, of course, NVIDIA make the high-powered computer chips that China needs for AI.

4:39And it's like the one bit of leverage that America really has is being able to stop companies like NVIDIA selling these chips to China. So slowing their development of artificial intelligence. Whilst on the other hand, of course, China has got a stranglehold on the rare earth critical minerals that American manufacturing needs. These are the two big points of tension in the relationship. And so I was looking at this thinking, why is Jensen Wang not being invited? Is it because NVIDIA actually want to sell more of their really high-tech chips to China? What's the disconnect here? And then all of a sudden, after all the other chief executives are boarded in Washington, the plane stops in Anchorage, Alaska to refuel.

5:17And who nips on? But there's Jensen Wang after all. So I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, and then Trump posts on True Social that all of the reports that Wang wasn't going to be coming along were fake news and he was always going to come along and that he's looking forward to having him aboard and that all of these people are going to be brought before President Xi in an attempt to open up China, in Trump's words, to American investment. They could, with these brilliant people, he said, could work their magic. That seems to be where Donald Trump's head is. But, of course, the big question is the Iran war.

5:54What can China do? What is the United States going to ask China to do in order to bring this to some sort of a resolution? Because China and Iran do have fairly close relations. A foreign minister for Iran was in China just last week. China imports a considerable amount of gas from the Gulf, from Iran. They have trade agreements. So this is something that China might have some ability to exert some pressure. The question is, you know, how much is Donald Trump and the American side going to push him to do so? As he was leaving the White House yesterday, I saw Donald Trump being asked about that.

6:31And he said he didn't need their help. But of course, I mean, people could look at what's happening in the war with Iran and think, well, he needs somebody's help for sure. I mean, not least because this trip was postponed, wasn't it, by six weeks. It was supposed to happen at the beginning of April. Now it's happening in the middle of May. And I think Donald Trump thought by delaying it for six weeks, he would be going into Beijing victorious in Iran. He would already have nuclear weapons out of Iran's capability. The whole thing would be done and dusted. He would look strong and victorious as he arrived to meet President Xi.

7:03And of course, it's quite the opposite. Yeah, just last week, he said in an interview that there wasn't going to be anything to talk about with Iran because he predicted that a deal would be done. He's been predicting that now for two months. But let's listen to what he had to say at the White House as he was about to leave when asked about Iran. Do you think he needs to intervene at all with the Iranians? I don't think he can help in any way. No, I don't think we need any help with Iran. We'll win it one way or the other. We'll win it peacefully or otherwise. Their Navy's gone. Their Air Force is gone.

7:34Every single element of their war machine is gone. So the he there is President Xi. And I mean, kind of dismissive there, although I think the reports coming out of American media is that there is going to be an ask and that they do need China's help. But Donald Trump isn't going to acknowledge that, I guess, to the assembled journalists on the South Lawn. Yeah. Do you think it does mean that he is going into this summit not holding all the cards, as he would say? We know how he always loves, doesn't he, to make out diplomacy like an international game of poker and it matters who's got the cards.

8:08It feels to me like he's got a weaker hand than he might have done going into this. And maybe President Xi is holding more cards than Donald Trump. Yeah, it's a bad place for the U.S. to be with this war going on now two months and Trump continually saying that the United States is winning, that Iran's navy is at the bottom of the sea and everything's been destroyed. There's actually an intelligence report that was leaked from the United States saying that Iran's military actually may be stronger than Donald Trump is letting on, that their missile launch facilities have been rebuilt and are still operational around the Strait of Hormuz.

8:45That wasn't the primary objective of this. Of course, the primary objective was to stop Iran's nuclear program in its tracks and get them to hand over their nuclear enriched uranium. And that hasn't happened either. So it has been two months now, and we still haven't had any kind of resolution. Here he is going to China now to try to talk about trade and to tout American might. And yet he has this kind of nipping at his heels throughout the whole trip. It's costing China too, though, isn't it, the Iran war? Because they get a lot of their oil and gas from there, albeit they've got more reliance on renewable energy than some other countries.

9:23And they do seem to have some quite good stocks of oil. So it's not hitting them really hard yet. But they want this war over with as much as anybody else, I would assume. And presumably, that's how Donald Trump would couch this, is it being in China's best interest. Maybe he could help China to help themselves somehow with Iran. Yeah, he's characterized it in the past as an American gift to the world, including to China, that we are securing the Strait of Hormuz. Of course, the Strait was open before this war began. But I think he does want to remind the Chinese that they are suffering from this as well.

9:58Although, as you point out, the Chinese resilience, their energy independence through their renewable resources has helped them weather this storm. I think if there's anything that's really hurting China right now is that the other Asian markets in Southeast Asia, places that get a lot of Chinese exports, they are hurting because they are less able to find alternative sources of energy. And so they're curtailing their imports and that is going to directly affect China. So, you know, this is a global economic issue. And anything that affects the global economy is going to obviously affect China, one of the world's largest exporters.

10:36Yeah, and this whole linkage between China and the war in Iran came up when the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was questioning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in the Senate yesterday and asking him about these concerns about China. You can listen to some of it here. Bottom line here, China. Does China buy 90 % of Iranian oil, Ms. Secretary? China buys a very large percentage of Iranian oil. Okay, 90 % is pretty large. so does China buy are they largest purchaser of Russian oil and gas I would imagine they're up there so they are they're the largest so President Trump when you go to China realize that the person you're talking to is propping up Russia and Iran I appreciate what you've done in Iran I appreciate what you're trying to do to end the Russian-Ukraine conflict do you agree with me Mr.

11:33Secretary that of all the countries on the planet, China could have the most influence of ending this war if they chose to? I think the most influence is in President Trump's hands and what he decides to do, and he'll set the terms of how this— But ultimately, China has a lot of leverage, you're right. Yeah, they do. What if they stop buying 90 percent of oil from Iran? That's not President Trump. That's up to China. Do you support putting tariffs on China if they continue to buy Russian oil and gas? tariffs is not my lane but anything you can do to put pressure on people i usually well do you believe that when we put pressure on india by 25 percent tariff for buying russian oil they kind of backed off i would say i've had a front row seat to the efficacy of tariff policy yeah i think it works guys and we're on the break breakout here in a minute of having a bill that would give the president ability to tariff the largest purchasers of russian oil and gas and I hope he will use it.

12:28That was a bit more optimistic, I think, about America's chances in Iran than some of what went on at that hearing. I thought it was really fascinating, Anthony, when Pete Hegseth, the Defence Secretary, was being questioned about the strategy around the Strait of Hormuz. Why didn't they see the possibility that Iran could simply move to close it and what were they going to do about opening it up? And Pete Hegseth kept insisting, oh, they had more military might to deploy than they already had, But I thought it seemed pretty clear from what he was saying. There is not a strategy for reopening the Strait of Hormuz at the moment.

13:02And it still seems mind blowing that they didn't see this coming and just quite how difficult this was going to be. Right. As we've talked about before, anyone who has planned for any kind of a military conflict with Iran over the past few decades has looked at this and said, OK, the one real point of weakness is the Strait of Hormuz and Iran just by nature of their territory looming over that narrow waterway that they can exert control and disrupt the global economy, which is exactly what they did. The talk about this Operation Freedom that was on again, off again, and maybe on again at some point, escorting tankers through the strait.

13:43You can't escort tankers that don't want to go through, and you can't do it in large enough numbers in order to really reopen the strait in full. So it's not a complete solution. There has to be some sort of negotiated settlement. Or the other option, I suppose, is some sort of massive ground invasion where you have U.S. troops occupying the area around Hormuz, including the towns where the Iranian military could pop up and fire drones out. You have to control the speedboats, the little Zodiac boats that could be going out with machine guns or missiles or their own drones or mines. It's just it's really, really hard to exert militarily the kind of control over that that would be necessary, which is why when you're talking to the defense secretary about solutions, there is no obvious military answer.

14:33As you say, you've got to talk to Marco Rubio or to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner about what sort of negotiations there are. And it does seem like Iran is willing to reach some sort of an agreement to open Hormuz and to if the United States suspends the blockade and allows Iranian shipments to go out. But that doesn't address the nuclear issue, which the Iranians seem to want to handle separately. And it also doesn't address the fact that Iran seems to now want to be able to say it should always be able to exert some sort of control over Hormuz as it's shown it can. So this is a much more complicated nut to crack than just sending in warships or flying American helicopters over that water.

15:16Yeah, so Iran may very well be on the agenda, if not the public communique, between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing. We know they'll be talking about trade. And that sort of seems fairly positive. I mean, it seems more like the kind of trade discussions you would have between America and like a European ally or something where they both have capitalist market economies. They both subscribe to the same international trade rules. That's not the case with China. I mean, this time last year, we were going into a full blown trade war between the US and China. Donald Trump had just put really high tariffs on Chinese exports into the United States.

15:54And now they're behaving more like friends. What's happened to the fact that they were supposed to be the world's greatest economic rivals and Donald Trump was trying to punish the Chinese? I think it may be a mutual acknowledgement that neither side could win a trade war. Trump raised those tariffs to 125 percent just about this time last year. He dropped them down just later on in May of 2025. And it was an acknowledgment that China does have the ability to exert pain on the United States, whether by refusing to buy soybean exports and hurting farmers or by imposing their own tariffs on American imports.

16:32They do have the ability to control, say, critical minerals coming out of China, which the United States' economy, its high-tech economy, relies on. So I think both sides ultimately realized and when they were sitting across the table and in South Korea during that trip in October that I was was with him on, I think they both realized that it's better to back away because no one is going to come out of it unscathed. And since then, it's just kind of been, all right, we're going to go along to get along and hope things calm down. And I think that may be the biggest hope out of this. I know Donald Trump wants trade deals and he wants announcements, and I think Xi will give him some of those.

17:12But I think the biggest hope from both sides is that they come out of this without any other kind of indication that the trade war that seemed inevitable just a year ago is going to crop back up again and disrupt the global economy that way. But this was a big part of Donald Trump's agenda, wasn't it? This was part of his platform was his anti-China rhetoric. He complained that they were sending chemicals to the United States that could make fentanyl. He complains that they fiddle and fix their exchange rates in a way that's disadvantageous to American exporters that they are copying American technology.

17:45I mean, it was a full-throated complaint and attacks on China, you know, what, 18 months ago that we were hearing from Donald Trump before he was elected how he was going to do something about this. Yeah, great for the campaign trail. I was at an event in Pennsylvania that Donald Trump attended that was all about the threat China posed to agriculture, to American agriculture, that they were buying up property, that they were controlling the technology that was needed for agricultural harvesting. And, you know, to be quite honest, the people around Donald Trump were talking a big game about the Chinese threat.

18:23Donald Trump, when it came time for him to answer questions, said, you know, I've got good relations with Xi. If Biden hadn't been elected, they would be buying all of these soybeans and exports and the farmers would be doing great. And it was Biden that messed everything up. So his campaign, I think, saw a benefit to using this rhetoric and stirring up kind of anti-Chinese sentiment. And I think Donald Trump, in his heart of hearts, really does like Xi. And he's a very personal, transactional kind of a politician. So when it comes right down to it and the two of them get in the same room, I think he thinks he can strike a deal with China and does not necessarily see them as any kind of a threat that he and his friendships cannot defuse.

19:02I'll tell you what I noticed yesterday was a few of the big MAGA influencers, some of the same people who've been complaining about the war in Iran, saying that they didn't want to see a lot of Chinese money coming into America, big investments. Because there's a possibility that Donald Trump could announce about as much as$1 trillion in inward investment. And that's Chinese companies often building factories to manufacture things inside America to get around the trade tariffs. But I saw Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly, some other people like that saying they didn't want this Chinese money coming into America, that this was one of the reasons why Donald Trump was in the White House to stop this kind of Chinese takeover of American manufacturing.

19:41Is there a possibility of another kind of MAGA fracture over this? There was a big pushback to that because the idea was floated. You know, Donald Trump wants more investment. He wants foreign countries to invest in the United States and to build things here. And, yeah, it's all well and good when it's South Korea or Japan or European industrial automakers and such. But it's a very different thing when you talk about China. And there have been reports even that China was interested in striking a deal with Ford Motor or another American motor company to build electric cars here in the United States.

20:14And Trump seems to be OK with that in theory. But boy, that is going to kick a hornet's nest because the one thing you hear from the MAGA faithful is that they are very wary of China's role in the United States and China's influence in the United States and any kind of talk of allowing that to happen, whether it's these H-1B visas that allow foreign workers to come over here, attend American universities, which Donald Trump has actually been kind of open to. Chinese students coming over here, he seems pretty fine with that. And that has generated a lot of anger among the base, among Republicans I've talked to out there in the middle America.

20:54And then this idea of investment also, or property ownership also, just they're very suspicious of that. So staying in Washington, we heard earlier Pete Hegseth giving evidence in front of a Senate committee yesterday. Also on the Hill in Congress was Kash Patel, head of the FBI, being questioned about a number of things, including recent reports of alleged excessive drinking on the job that was reported in the Atlantic magazine. And Mr Patel clashed pretty firely with Senator Chris Van Hollen over those allegations. And as you can hear, Patel had obviously been waiting for this question and had prepared for it.

21:32Is it your testimony that those allegations are categorically false? Unequivocally categorically false. So there have been no occasions during your tenure when FBI personnel were unable to promptly reach you? Absolutely not. You can ask my entire workforce. They hear from me at every single hour of the day, as do these great gentlemen here, as do the men and women of the interagency and state and local law enforcement in the White House. And so there have been no occasions when your security detail had difficulty waking or locating you. Is that right? Nope. It's a total farce. I don't even know where you get this stuff, but it doesn't make it credible because you say so.

22:05I'm not saying it, Director Patel. It's been written and documented. You are literally saying it. No, I'm saying that these are reports, Director Patel. Unlike, unlike your baseless reports, the only person that was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gangbanging rapist was you. The only person that ran up a$7 ,000 bar tab in Washington, D.C. at the lobby bar was you. So the only individual in this room that has been drinking on taxpayer dime. Do you know, Mr. Director, that it is a crime to lie to Congress? Do you know that? I do not lie to Congress. I didn't ask you that.

22:43And you're insinuating that I am. I asked you whether you know. You want to correct your time in this session where you got steamrolled by the facts so you can have a Twitter narrative. Mr. Director. So you can go raise more money and spend more money on$7 ,000 bar tax. Just let the record show, Mr. Chairman. And I'm not going to give it to you. The director of the FBI apparently does not want to answer the question. Okay. There was a lot there that we heard from Kash Patel. A couple of things I think probably need clarification. The convicted gangbanging rapist that he was referring to there was Kilmer Abrego Garcia, who has not been convicted of rape or anything else.

23:19He has been held by the United States and was deported temporarily to El Salvador. He's back. His case is ongoing. There are allegations of human trafficking, but he denies them. The margaritas in El Salvador was at a point where the Congressman Van Hollen went down to see him while he was being detained. Brigo Garcia is a resident of Maryland, which is represented by Van Hollen. And they sat at a table with some water glasses that had sugar around the top. The El Salvadorian government may have placed them there. That's what Van Hollen said, but they weren't drinking. And then the$7 ,000 bar tab, the Van Hollen campaign has said that that was a campaign event.

24:02That was a$7 ,000. As part of a fundraiser, Van Hollen did not drink$7 ,000 worth of booze. But I think that shows, like you said, Patel was prepared to punch back. It's kind of the Pam Bondy strategy where you dig up things about the person questioning you in these hearings to try to throw them off balance. And I guess our listeners can judge the effectiveness of it. Yeah, that was exactly what it reminded me of, was when Pat and Bondi used to go in front of Congress and she would have something prepared for every single congressman who was going to speak to her. Something from their past which she would have crafted into, she thought, some kind of clever little soundbite and aggressively hit them with that rather than answer the question.

24:42It's just the time she did the most of that, the kind of peak Bondi, led to her getting sacked, didn't it? So you wonder if it's the most effective strategy. And if you were to look around at Donald Trump's appointees, high on the list of people who might be next to lose their job probably is Kash Patel because there's been a lot of stories around about him. Yeah, there were a lot of stories and not just this Atlantic story, which talked about alcohol abuse. Also, you remember he went to the Olympics in Italy and there was that famous photo of him in the locker room of the U.S. hockey team chugging a beer and celebrating.