What’s Next for Taiwan? And Dr. Oz on Entitlements & Transplants 5/15/26

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15:52Eamon Javers:Welcome back to Squawk Pod from CNBC. Today with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin.

15:59Dr. Mehmet Oz:A new industry-wide coalition of 29 major healthcare companies has come together to simplify prior authorization for medical treatment. Joining us now on that and much more, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. And when you sat down, we did talk a little bit about some of the fraud that you've uncovered, but we intro'd you with this other issue, which I think it's kind of interesting because it's almost diametrically opposed to trying to uncover fraud. We need, I guess, these UnitedHealthcare recently decided to streamline authorization for a lot of this stuff because they've been criticized so much.

16:42Dr. Mehmet Oz:So 30 % of the procedures are going to be easier to do now. This is a huge initiative for you and it could be really, really important for what we reimburse and what we don't, for patients to be able to do this quickly without a lot of paperwork. And we've got AI and all this stuff. Can't we do it in a great, more facile way? Without question. It is the single issue that angers patients more than anything. And the reason for that is you're having this precious discussion with your doctor in their office and doctor says you need to have a biopsy of this to find out if it's cancer. Oh my gosh, I'm scared.

17:13Dr. Mehmet Oz:I got to take care of this. As soon as possible, I want it done yesterday. today. And then the long arm of insurance reaches in, says, hold on a second, Joe, wait a minute, hold on. I know you paid your insurance premiums, but before you go any further, we're going to make sure you actually need this procedure done. And it takes you six weeks to find out. Six weeks. Six, I mean, for no reason. So we went, and this is a very important principle. The president said, look, you can make laws, you can pass rules and regulations, but you also have the power to convene. You know, get folks to come together and ask him very directly, will you fix this on your own.

17:43Dr. Mehmet Oz:If you do, then we're going to keep paying just like we've been paying and we don't have to make all these other things happen. That can be very uncomfortable. Plus the power to convene means industry does it on their own. It's a nimble solution. These folks are world experts. And if they do it the right way, it's a better answer for the American. The reason I said it was sort of almost the opposite of the fraud investigation, if you don't qualify or if you've got doctors that are trying to do things that aren't necessary, God forbid that there's physicians that do things like that. You want to make sure that the procedure is necessary and covered by insurance.

18:19Dr. Mehmet Oz:So, you know, on the one hand, trying to cut down on fraud. On the other hand, you're making it easier for people to get approval for a lot of procedures. Well, prior authorization probably reduces health care expenses about 20%. Right. It's a big deal. And it's not just because of fraud. Sometimes doctors don't quite keep up with the times. Procedures are out of date. They recommend the wrong medications, the wrong tests. They do the wrong procedures. No one's perfect. Not every doctor finishes top half of the class, right? Half don't. And so you've got to be able to get everyone to function at the highest ability that they have.

18:49Dr. Mehmet Oz:Prior authorization helps that. What we announced this week, which is important, is we've got all the insurance companies. You mentioned UnitedHealthcare, but the industry in general has cut down prior authorization already in the last year, more than 10%. And they're rapidly going towards the goal we set for them, which is being able to do it immediately. You see your doctor in that office visit I described. They can describe almost immediately whether you're eligible or not and move on. But the problems are the doctors are faxing back answers. We want to ask the facts. From now on, it needs to be digital.

19:19Dr. Mehmet Oz:Joe, remember, when the data doesn't flow, there's friction in the system. There's a reason for friction. People make money when there's friction. There are toll takers who charge you a little something extra for the effort to get past the friction in the system. We want doctors and insurance companies talking with electronic medical record systems directly. They're now committed. There's a watering hole, basically. safe place. Everyone goes. They're starting to exchange data immediately. They're beginning to trust each other enough so that if you're in the doctor's office, the insurance company can reach into the electronic medical record, know that Joe deserves to have this procedure, and they're going to get it immediately authorized so there's no more arguments.

19:53Dr. Mehmet Oz:And there was a controversy with UnitedHealthcare, I think, and Medicare Advantage, right, for doctors looking at some arcane conditions that maybe someone has, maybe they don't have, and then prescribing all kinds of procedures and drugs for that too. Do you remember that situation? Oh, very well. It's called upcoding. Upcoding. They'll go to your office or to your home and they'll say, hey, listen, I'm going to examine you for things that you may have that I'm not going to treat. Now, in fairness, I do think the insurance industry is well aware of this and we have not tolerated this at all. They pass it off as preventive, I guess, don't they?

20:27Dr. Mehmet Oz:You don't even know you have this, but I've got a plan for you to take care of it. That's horrible. Well, it's wrong and it undermines the system. And the idea was if you're taking care of sicker patients, you should get paid a little extra as an insurance company because it's going to cost you more. But this is actually part of a much larger issue in health care, which is about health fraud and abuse. And we think within the Medicare and Medicaid system, it's about$100 billion. Think about that. Put it in context. If we could fix the fraud in Medicare just by itself, we would double the life expectancy of the Medicare.

21:00Dr. Mehmet Oz:Of the program itself. So everyone out there who's working their tails off right now, trying to keep up with life, who hopes that one day when they get to 65, they're going to be able to retire safely onto Medicare. We will double the life expectancy if we deal with the fraud, waste, and abuse. So this week, as you probably witnessed with the vice president, we made a series of large announcements. We're aggressively going after the fraud. There are several examples, but I'm going to just challenge you with a couple. And for the audience at home, just pay attention. This is really cool. Think about this.

21:27Dr. Mehmet Oz:One third of all the hospices in the entire country are in Los Angeles, not California, just LA. Here in New York City, the number one job, all these people working out here, number one job in New York City, personal care services. That's someone's carrying the groceries upstairs for their parents, and they're getting paid for it, or they're driving them to the doctor's office, getting paid for it. These two phenomenon are stunning to me because their aberration is so large in any other sector, you would have picked it up years ago. In California, as an example, the Auditor General warned the current governor that there was a problem with hospice fraud.

22:01Dr. Mehmet Oz:But remember, if you're stealing people's money when they're most vulnerable, you'll steal their health, you'll steal their life, which is what we're finding in California. So we, this week, announced that we're going to stop paying, suspend payments on 800 hospices in California. 800. How many are in LA? Almost all of them? They're about 1 ,800 in LA. So almost half, and we're still going. And here's the shocking part. Of all those people, just a handful even raised a voice and said, wait a minute, are you sure? Everybody else said, I'm running away. I'm like rats scurrying for the corners trying to get off the sinking ship.

22:36Dr. Mehmet Oz:They recognized the gigs up. Here in New York, I've got a major concern because if you have a jobs program with Medicaid money, which is what's happened here, because that's the question you should ask yourself. These governors, like, is this really a flaw? if there's this kind of fraud, or could it be a feature? Is it possible that we actually are okay with some Medicaid fraud? Because after all, the federal government's paying people to do things normally your family would do for you with no money. Now you're not unemployed. You're getting income. I'm taxing that income for the state. And here's the part that's really bothering me.

23:09Dr. Mehmet Oz:I've just found out that they're beginning to unionize these personal care services. So the big union here, the service union, 1199, is unionizing these personal care services. It will double the size of the union, and we're concerned about political patronage. Are you really interested in taking care of folks who need help or trying to stay out of the hospital or nursing homes? Or is this a jobs program with a political patronage kicker that can help keep money flowing to the political parties? We cannot allow this to happen. The president and the vice president who leads the White House anti-fraud task force aren't going to tolerate it.

23:41Dr. Mehmet Oz:So you found some similar fraud in my home state of Ohio as well, the same type of thing as Minnesota? Very similar. Again, there's a large Somalian population. The fraud is around Columbus. It's very concerning. And like Minnesota, where we actually had to defer payment, we've stopped paying about$350 million to Minnesota because they just couldn't show us the number. Do you worry about that, that people that need it aren't going to get it? We don't want to hurt the people in Minnesota. We want to make sure that people meeting Minnesota are paying attention. Is there a trend underneath, though, about who owns all these places?

24:16Dr. Mehmet Oz:That's a very good question. It turns out there's large organized criminal syndicates that are involved and they often have foreign connections. So we believe they may be foreign government connections. So we've got Russian mafia in LA. We've got Chinese mafia. Go to Flushing, Queens to see what happens. You can't walk to the streets without people telling you, you know, you should probably leave now. And these are organized, very well-oiled efforts to suck money out of the Medicaid and Medicare systems. They go into these accounts that quickly are laundered and then they're shipped overseas. One third, let's go to Florida.

24:48Dr. Mehmet Oz:It's not just a blue state issue. One third of all of the durable medical equipment suppliers, they sell wheelchairs, canes, things. So there are twice as many of those as McDonald's in South Florida. And they're run by Cubans frequently. When they're approached by law enforcement, they flee back to Cuba and the money disappears off to the Cayman Islands. So the goal for us is the money never leaves the building. The agency that the president's having me run, CMS, which is Medicare and Medicaid, we cover about 170 million lives. We don't want the money leaving the building. So if you try to defraud our programs, and it's, you know, unfortunately become easier and easier to do that because there was no real discipline in the prior administration to deal with these program integrity issues, we're going to shut you down.

25:37Dr. Mehmet Oz:We're going to take a break and bring out another guest that I've been wanting to do this for a while. We're very excited about this. about Roger Altman, and we'll explain why. I was going to ask you about the California loophole. Is that, have you closed that now? You know how they cover everyone. All the illegal immigrants are covered by what it's called Medi-Cal, and then they do this accounting sort of sleight of hand where federal funds come in to cover other things, and then they use what they would have used, those funds to cover other things, to cover the illegal out. We announced this week we are deferring$1.34 billion just for this last audit, the last quarter audit from California because of that kind of shenanigans.

26:21Dr. Mehmet Oz:It's not fair for taxpayers in New Mexico and Arizona and the city to pay extra federal taxes to compensate because California wants to give benefits to undocumented individuals. Which we heard that never happens. Team Jeffries looked me straight. It never happens. Not only is it happening, California is paying us back already. You don't pay someone back money. You don't owe them. All right.

26:47Dr. Mehmet Oz:Our next guest has a long history with him and with Squawk Box. Roger Altman is founder and senior chairman of Evercore. He's on all the time. And we talk about a wide range of subjects. There's been times when we've had Dr. Oz on at one point or had you on separately. And I said, we've got to get you two gentlemen together at some point. And we will tell people why. Now, 24 years ago, well, you tell the story. You were faced with a very difficult decision. You needed a heart transplant 24 years ago. Well, before his current and so far successful stint at CMS, Dr. Raz was a brilliant heart surgeon and has celebrated a transplant surgeon as there was in the country.

27:34Dr. Mehmet Oz:And I was very ill for some years, actually, beginning in 1992. But by the end of 2001, I was so ill from a cardiac point of view, I couldn't be outside a hospital. There was congestive heart failure? No, I had a condition called ventricular tachycardia, which means essentially you have an electrical failure in your heart system, causes your heart rate to explode upward to levels where it stops actually pumping. It's really fluttering. Not enough oxygen and not enough blood gets to your brain. And if it's not interrupted or stopped this problem, you'll die. And I was having regular episodes of ventricular tachycardia.

28:15Dr. Mehmet Oz:And so I was hospitalized uptown here in New York at Columbia Presbyterian. I had to be there indefinitely waiting for a heart transplant. And there's quite a wonderful, poignant little story. I had never met Mehmet, and I'm lying there in this ICU, and it's pretty grim because I'm really not doing well. And he came into my room one day and introduced himself, and he said, I'm going to Davos in a couple of weeks to give a speech. I know you served in government before, twice, and I wonder if you look at my speech and see if you could improve it. So he left it with me and I lie in there and I read it.

28:59Dr. Mehmet Oz:And he comes back a couple of days later and I say, I'll work on the speech. It needs a lot of work. I probably said it needs more work than it did on one condition, which is you do my heart transplant. Now, background to that is you never know when the organ, a kidney, a liver, a lung, a heart will arrive at the hospital because it's a result of an accident. usually, and the sudden reality of a donor. So you don't know when it's coming. And so the protocol is that there's a team, a transplant team on duty 24-7, and whichever surgeon is on duty at the time does your operation. But I thought to myself, why not get the very best?

29:43Dr. Mehmet Oz:So I said, I'll work on your speech if you promise to do my heart transplant no matter when the heart shows up, whatever day or whatever hour, the day or night. And Mehmet agreed. And in the middle of the night on February 1st, 2002, he did my heart transplant. And 24 years and three months later, I'm still here. And I owe an unpayable debt to Mehmet, unpayable debt because I'm probably in the top 10 % of survival rates. And it started and without Mehmet, I wouldn't be here. you said you know and i mean i i listen to you and i just it's move it's it's very moving but one of the reasons i wanted to do this oz told me mema told me this and i said maybe you did and i said dr oz because whether it's the tv show or whatever the hell it was people have this notion of doc of dr i don't know whether it was worth it to do that on a tv show just the other night Some guy on Bravo's, well-known.

30:49Dr. Mehmet Oz:Someone mentioned your name. He goes, whoa. I think this Andy Cohen went, oh, one of our great minds, and rolled his eyes and totally questioned your medical credentials. And I just, and I'm not your defender. I don't care. You know what I mean? But it really, when I heard, it totally changed my impression. Well, at the time I was so ill, Mehmet was at the pinnacle of this profession. And anyone who could have gotten him to do the surgery, it's a pretty scary surgery, would have wanted to. And this little opportunity presented itself, his Davos speech, for me to grab him. And I did, and he agreed to be grabbed.

31:33Dr. Mehmet Oz:And he did the surgery, and I have benefited every hour since that time. Well, Roger, I was going to do your transplant anyway. You're a national treasure. We would definitely make sure that you did well. The thing about, let's start with these two issues. First, television. The president brings this up all the time. Well, it's not just the TV. Now it's TDS. I mean, you're associated with Trump and the Trump administration, so you're, you know, POS or whatever for doing that. It's just, you know, hyper TDS. But it's good. I've told people in the White House this story. They have no idea. You don't tell people.

32:06Dr. Mehmet Oz:And your last heart transplant surgery was 2020, did you say? Yeah, just before the pandemic, I stopped doing heart surgery. But you don't go around bragging about your patients. I've actually operated on a lot of people you know, but it's not polite, it's not appropriate, and we have a code of conduct we don't talk about. If Roger hadn't come on here, God bless you, Roger, because whenever you're on Squawk Box talking about it, folks send me the clips, and I feel greatly honored. But doing heart surgery was the best job of my life, except for the current job. And the reason for that is I get to look at someone in the eyes like I am with Roger right now.

32:39Dr. Mehmet Oz:And by the way, the reason he's alive, God bless you for thanking me, but it's Yerati's wife. The people who live this many years with transplants, they have loved ones who are guarding them and making sure that everything's done correctly. And so - That is really true. But I'm in the change business. I just love being in a place where we can make a difference. And in heart transplantation at the time, we were rapidly growing an opportunity to save lives. We were inventing new kinds of mechanical heart devices so that we can keep people alive so they could get a heart transplant. You have to actually have a community that donates hearts.

33:11Dr. Mehmet Oz:All these things are opportunities. I did the show for the same reason. I recognized America wasn't getting the health message because we weren't giving it to you. We're sitting in the ivory tower, in my case, at Columbia. You know, we think we're hot stuff, but the average American is dying for preventable causes. But if you really want to make a difference, you go in the government. And I'll say that very boldly now. We are actively recruiting. Other agencies are as well. this is a unique generational opportunity, not just because of us, it's because of technology. We will have the ability during this administration to use digital tools to completely change how information flows in healthcare.

33:44Dr. Mehmet Oz:We're sitting in an environment where you see data flow seamlessly all the time. We have the opposite in medicine and toll takers do that on purpose. We can change that. We can get doctors and hospitals and insurance companies and all the other players in the health system collaborating. But the reason Roger Altman's alive today, 24 years later, is because you wouldn't take no for an answer. You will fight for success with your family. You're out to help you that. We have technologies that are advanced that catch up to them, but there's something, a miracle about an individual can make peace with their heart.

34:16Dr. Mehmet Oz:And let me just think about this with you in a second. When your heart has rejected you and Roger's heart was stopping on him periodically and killing him. So you came back from death how many times? About five. Five times. That's a lot there. So he's got four more lives left. By the way, he's not joking. I mean, over the edge, over the edge, you know, I mean, flat line. And so when you're alive and you can deal with the fact that your heart is dying on you and then you get a new heart, you make peace with it. You become a chimera. You literally start to exchange cells in your body. And when that happens, it's a miracle.

34:51Dr. Mehmet Oz:The concept that you could be alive 24 hours after a transplant and Roger's not alone. It's happening more and more. But of course, we need people to donate. And what Roger really to me represents is an opportunity to wake up America. If you don't tell your family today that God forbid something were to bad happen to you, give my organs to someone else. You can't take them with you. There will not be enough with Roger Altman. And we have a miracle sitting in our table. Do you know who donated your heart? Do you have another family? Well, there's a strict protocol on this. So all I know is it was a woman four years younger than me who died of a fall in Buffalo, New York.

35:26Dr. Mehmet Oz:And I wrote a letter to the hospital. You have to do that. They won't give you the identity to be given to her family. And there was no response. And then a couple of years later, I wrote another one. And there was also no response. These letters were forwarded to the family. But that's understandable. A lot of families don't want to confront, you know, the death that occurred and here's someone who's still alive on account of that death, it's difficult. So no, I never was able to make contact with the family despite those efforts. And that's not uncommon. So I know nothing other than that I was 55, she was 51, and she died of a fall when she lived above.

36:03Dr. Mehmet Oz:I've heard crazy anecdotes about people that actually can feel the presence of whoever gave them the heart. I can't imagine that that's so metaphorical. But as Mehmet said, And there's a tremendous challenge here in terms of the number of donors. They're not really increasing. In fact, based on some technologies like safer vehicles and fewer vehicular deaths, they're decreasing. And so it's quite hard to get the number of transplants, in particular heart transplants, up in this country. They really haven't risen very much because of the lack of donors. And it obviously is very successful. Cool.

36:41Dr. Mehmet Oz:You were going to come on on Monday, book Monday. Will you come on on Monday? Sure. Can you still do that? Because we want to talk about all the things we would normally talk to Roger about, whether it's, you know, the present strip and a rim and everything else. I just have a question to the doctor. Yes. In case this happens to us now and you're not practicing. He did it in 2022. You did surgery. Yes. Do you think that robots are going to be doing what you did to him in five years or 10 years and do it better? Like when you think about what the future of this looks like, when I need this, am I going to be having a doctor do this to me?

37:20Dr. Mehmet Oz:Well, there's different kinds of procedures in terms of technical challenges. A heart transplant, it's a long, long way away for a robot. But there are other procedures we do that robots, because they can be extraordinarily precise, might be better. And a good example is eye surgery. where we're already delegating a lot of the procedure to a robot because these are micron differences. You're talking about like LASIK surgery. LASIK is an example. But there'll be other procedures. We do do heart surgery, some coronary bypass, some valve operations. We'll use robots to help make the process go better.

37:49Dr. Mehmet Oz:But you need a doctor involved. And this is probably the biggest battle we're going to face over the next few years. About two-thirds of Americans don't trust AI to be able to be giving them health advice without a doctor involved. That's a a reasonable fear to have. So we're gonna have to have human beings, but there's a human element to it as well. Roger, I think, maybe close with this reality. I think part of getting someone to a major procedure like this is trusting them. So you've gotta be able to connect with each other and understand that you'll be there for each other. And it was the most fulfilling part of the entire process for me, was knowing that people knew I would be there and they could trust me.

38:24Dr. Mehmet Oz:And I knew that they'd also be my partner. Because without that, you don't get these big operations done successfully. I wanna thank you, Joe, for bringing me together. Roger. Last night when you texted and said, you're not going anywhere after your segment. No. You had to change your schedule. It's worth it. God bless you for making it happen. Thank you for saving his life. I texted Rod and you said, I'll be there immediately because I owe this guy. Well, I do. He calls me and says, look, I can't tell you why, but you need to be in Alaska tomorrow night. I'll be there. I said that to Jensen Wong.

38:59Dr. Mehmet Oz:Dr. Ross, thank you.

39:02Eamon Javers:We'll be right back.

39:31Eamon Javers:Every time. So, happy Father's Day. Or visit WeatherTech.com for your dad today. Hiring isn't just filling a role. It's about finding people who can drive results. Indeed Sponsored Jobs helps you match with the right candidates faster. Target candidates by skills, certifications, or location. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. And listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Do it the right way with Indeed.

40:09Eamon Javers:At Strayer University, we help students like you go from will I to why not? For over 130 years, we've been innovating higher education to make it more affordable, accessible, and attainable so you can reach your goals. Go from thinking, can I? To yes, I can. And keep striving. Visit Strayer.edu to learn more. Strayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by Shev and as many campuses, including at 2121 15th Street North in Arlington, Virginia.

40:43Eamon Javers:This is Squawk Pod.

40:46Dr. Mehmet Oz:I don't want to say, I'm not going to say that. There's only one person that knows that. You know who it is me? of the only person. That question was asked to me today by President Xi. I said, I don't talk about that.

41:00Roger Altman:Stand by Joe. And three, two, one, his mic, Q.

41:05Dr. Mehmet Oz:Well, waiting for this, Eamon, good tease. President Trump just speaking to reporters on Air Force One. Eamon has the details.

41:13Roger Altman:Do tell. Joe, that's right. The president talking to reporters just a few moments ago on Air Force One. He was asked about his conversation with Xi Jinping on Taiwan. The president said that Xi Jinping asked him if the United States would defend Taiwan in case of a military confrontation. The president said he didn't respond to that. But striking, of course, Joe, that Xi Jinping would have asked President Trump directly about the issue of Taiwan and whether or not the United States would defend the island militarily. The president's saying here that he just simply didn't respond and moved on to a different topic.

41:49Roger Altman:On the issue of the H-200 chips and NVIDIA, the president said those did not come up in conversation. On tariffs, the president said those did not come up in the conversation. On the issue of Iran and the blockade, the president said that he did not ask Xi Jinping for any favors on the blockade. He said there was a proposal on Iran that he didn't like, and he dismissed it out of hand because the first sentence was not good. He didn't say exactly what the first sentence was that was not good from the Chinese side. But he says he dismissed that. He's not asking for any favors. And it does not sound from the way the president was talking, Joe, that he will be getting any help from the Chinese in the Strait of Hormuz or with the Iranians.

42:33Roger Altman:So the president talking to reporters, you know, a testy exchange at times with some of the members of the media who are on the plane, calling them names and so forth, but suggesting that he had a good visit. He enjoyed his meeting with Xi Jinping, and he considers him a friend, Joe.

42:50Dr. Mehmet Oz:Yeah. I would ask you what names, but it's like a cat. You clap first time the cat jumped, but we're getting sort of used to it. Any new variations on the names to call a reporter stupid or anything worth? Let's laugh. We'll probably read about it in the post tomorrow.

43:09Roger Altman:The president is frustrated with the New York Times coverage of the war in Iran. He views it as a military success. And he says it's treasonous for reporters to raise questions about whether, in fact, that's true.

43:25Dr. Mehmet Oz:I am back thinking about Taiwan. So he he didn't say, I don't see a conflict with Taiwan or that's what we're surmising. He didn't say anything. He didn't respond to President Xi when he said it. But I guess there's strategic ambiguity.

43:41Roger Altman:According to Trump. Yeah. Sorry for the delay here. But according to Trump, Xi Jinping asked him directly if the U.S. would defend Taiwan in the case of a military confrontation. And President Trump said he didn't respond to that. I think it's striking that Xi Jinping would ask him directly whether the United States would defend Taiwan. It is. The policy, as we talked about earlier in the show, has always been strategic ambiguity by the U.S. not to answer that question. The president says that he didn't answer it here, but Xi Jinping is proving for an answer. I don't think it's striking. I think he's testing him.

44:11Roger Altman:It's clearly on Xi's mind.

44:13Dr. Mehmet Oz:This is the moment. This is the whole game right here for Xi Jinping. I would ask him. I mean, you have to imagine he would ask him. It was also a way of saying, we may do this at some point. But Eamon, are you sure that President Trump didn't point at him and say and say, don't, don't, because that always works. I mean, if you talk tough, that that has worked well. Don't. We'll say that to you.

44:39Roger Altman:He didn't say that. He didn't. He didn't. But, you know, look, he, yeah. So, you know, Xi Jinping asking Trump directly about this, I think, is telling that he wants an answer. We've been conversing here. The president did say.

44:57Dr. Mehmet Oz:Some of us think that it might be that are we, is Trump acquiescing? Is the president acquiescing? or we don't, it's ambiguous. What is he likely to do?

45:12Roger Altman:Yeah, but the president did say in this gaggle just now with reporters, he said, the last thing we need is another war 9 ,000 miles away. So it sounded to my ear anyway, listening to that comment that the president was suggesting the United States does not want to be involved in any war. Now, can you read into that, that the United States would not be involved in any war if the Chinese were to attack? You know, I don't think you can go that far. you know, because clearly the United States could get into a war that it doesn't want if it feels it has to. But the president said the last thing we need is a war 9000 miles away.

45:46Roger Altman:It's very far away. So, you know, what what did the what was the signal sent there? What message was received by Xi Jinping? That's a fascinating question. But also fascinating, I think, guys, is that he did not discuss the H200 chips and he did not discuss tariffs. Right. I mean, and both of those things were top of the agenda at the top at the beginning of this week. A lot of analysts expecting that both topics would be broached and maybe, you know, having some some resolution in favor of U.S. companies that apparently just wasn't discussed.

46:17Dr. Mehmet Oz:Doesn't constitute a wink and a nod. I wonder if it constitutes a wink, maybe, or just a nod, maybe. Hey, Eamon, what is your sense of the H200 piece? And then, you know, we still everyone's always trying to read the tea leaves on the pickup of Jensen in Alaska on the way over there. Some people have thought maybe he was going over there in part to try to make a deal. Or do you think that all that all of the CEOs who were there were there to make deals or to be sort of I don't want to say props, but props in the sort of a larger conversation about America and American power?

46:52Roger Altman:Yeah, I think they were props, Andrew. And I think they're willing props, very much so. You listen to the body language, the words and look at the body language of the CEOs who were here. They were here to be supportive. They were here to show American industrial strength and to support the president and to try to get some deals of their own on the side if they could. I think they all knew what that was going in. And I think there was a lot of unfounded speculation early in the week. I've been talking to you guys about this all week, about an NVIDIA deal and the fact that Jensen was on the plane meant that some kind of deal was imminent.

47:26Roger Altman:It clearly was not. I mean, we were not hearing any footsteps on that in advance. We haven't heard anything about it since. I think it was simply the fact that the president realized he wasn't on the manifest and wanted him on the airplane. And so he got him on the airplane. And that's maybe all there is to it. But for Jensen, what he wants is the Chinese to buy the chips that have already been authorized for purchase by the United States back in December. The Chinese are not buying them because they want to cultivate their own domestic chip industry. And they don't want to lean on NVIDIA. And they don't want to have that sort of intelligence vulnerability to U.S.

48:01Roger Altman:spying attempts through those chips. So Jensen wants them to make some purchases. It looks like they didn't make any purchases on this trip. Eamon Javers, thank you.

48:13Dr. Mehmet Oz:In the meantime, I want to get over to Eunice Yoon, who may have some news from the Chinese side of all of this. Eunice?

48:21Eamon Javers:Well, Andrew, the Chinese state media is not reporting President Trump's comments on Air Force One at all. And I think what's interesting about President Trump's comment on board about Taiwan is that it really does explain why up until this point in the state press, there was no mention of President Trump's comments about Taiwan, which is a signal that the Chinese were not happy with whatever it was that conversation was about Taiwan between President Trump and President Xi. The overarching readout with the Chinese was very glowing about President Trump's praise for President Xi. In that readout, the state media cited President Xi as saying that President Trump wants to make America great again, while President Xi wants Chinese rejuvenation.

49:13Eamon Javers:So putting President Xi on par with President Trump. It also cited President Trump as saying that the two signed deals and resolved issues. And it says that the two discussed hot regional issues. Now, underpinning this newfound friendship between the U.S. and China is what the state media attributed to President Xi, which is a constructive, he says, new U.S.-China strategic stability. But again, as Eamon had mentioned, there was no confirmation of any sort of deals or any formal agreements, not only in the state press, but also the foreign ministry. And also, I think what underscores the fragility of this relationship yet again is that we're just getting reports that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is going to be visiting with President Xi next Wednesday.

50:04Dr. Mehmet Oz:Eunice, are you surprised that President Xi asked President Trump directly about Taiwan and about what he would ultimately do?

50:13Eamon Javers:Right. Well, based on what we heard yesterday and the fact that President Xi, in the opening visit and kind of like the first moment when he and President Trump are sitting down, that he was stressing the issue that's so important to him, Taiwan, basically saying that if President Trump were to breach that red line when it comes to Taiwan, that the relationship could unfurl and end up in a dangerous scenario. So because his language was so strong yesterday, it's not so surprising that he would carry on today with with that same sort of message.

50:53Dr. Mehmet Oz:But do you think that he's trying to force the issue? Meaning I think we're all now trying to understand whether that question and this issue right now, in this moment, given, frankly, you know, I mean, we have ammunition issues in terms of just what our military is even capable of right now, given everything that's going on elsewhere around the world and whether we think in any way that President Xi would be trying to take advantage of this moment as it relates to Taiwan?

51:23Eamon Javers:Well, it could be a scenario where he's probing because what we have been seeing is that China has become much more confident. A lot of the messaging over the past year is that since President Trump has come in with what the Chinese were described, the trade wars, the tariffs, that they've been able to survive. They've been able to do well. I think one other thing that is worth thinking about is how it seems as though the Chinese have become much more paranoid about what they're hearing. out of William Lai in the president in Taiwan, that they're feeling much more. Because one thing that I would say about China is that the more you see them act confidently, the more it also underscores a certain vulnerability or an anxiety and paranoia that they have.

52:09Eamon Javers:And so because William Lai has been so forceful and talking so much about the potential for Taiwan independence, you're seeing the Chinese feeling that they need to clamp down on that and also maybe feeling a little bit more emboldened that they might be able to do it, especially if the U.S. is not going to be clamping down and putting pressure on them.

52:35Dr. Mehmet Oz:Eunice, what is the date that the most widely cited date for when Xi wants to do this is when? There are some things coming up in the future in China where it would make sense that he wanted to get this done because it is something he wants to get done. What are those dates? Is it 2027 or later? Well, right.

52:57Eamon Javers:So that was a date that had been put out by U.S. intelligence officials that it could be 2027. But I mean, people still really don't know, because even though, of course, there's always been a belief that President Xi would want to have what the Chinese describe as a reunification of Taiwan to China, whereas the Taiwanese would say that there is no reunification. But the Chinese would argue that that that he would want that under his belt. You know, at the same time, the economy here is still quite fragile. You know, despite the fact that we've been seeing all these CEOs coming to town and talking about the potential for the market here.

53:40Eamon Javers:I mean, there's still a lot of fragility. And so because of that, that could be a reason why President Xi would not want to go ahead with some sort of attack. OK.

53:51Dr. Mehmet Oz:OK. And then, Eunice, one last piece of this. Are you surprised that there were no conversations, at least as the president's President Trump's described this, about tariffs at all or about these H200 NVIDIA chips? I mean, I think that is surprising. And the other piece was on Iran, the president and President Trump suggested effectively was a proposal put forward by President Xi that he dismissed outright.

54:15Eamon Javers:Yeah, well, for the tariffs, I think that it might not have come up because there was an expectation that since this is the first of four meetings this year, that there was a little bit of time to kind of address the tariff issues as well as rare earths. that the expectation is that the two sides, you know, in kind of the spirit of stability, would want to kind of renew the truce, but that they might still have some time. And then in terms of Iran, I mean, there was, you know, this proposal, but at the same time, a lot of the comments that we heard that President Trump said about President Xi and the Chinese were things that we've heard before.

55:00Eamon Javers:So I think what we were looking for, and a lot of of observers we're looking for, is whether or not the Chinese would commit to some sort of action. And that's something that we still haven't seen.

55:10Dr. Mehmet Oz:OK. All right. Eunice, thank you.

55:14Eamon Javers:And that is Squawk Pod for today and for the week. Thank you for listening. I think we all deserve a weekend now. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern to get the smartest takes and analysis from our TV show right into your ears. Please follow Squawk Pod wherever you like to get your podcasts. We'll meet you right back here on Monday.

55:42Roger Altman:We are clear. Thanks, guys.

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