Posted originally on CTH on May 15, 2026 | Sundance | 

President Trump gives quick comments to the assembled Press Pool at the White House upon return from China.  WATCH:

The most interesting aspect to the Beijing trip was not and is not the trade success stories that surfaced during the trip {USTR Greer}.  While President Trump brought titans of industry, tech and finance with him to Beijing, the emphasis is on relationships.

Stay elevated. Note the emphasis by Secretary Rubio was on geopolitical relations against the background of current events.  Note how much narrative energy is spent on the ‘relationship’ aspect to President Trump and Chairman Xi, from both leaders and also on direct questions to all pertinent current events.

When questioned about issues, Trump, Rubio and Xi spoke of relations – not details of policy or current events.  The venues within China were specific to something more akin to understanding motives behind policy, personal motives, historic motives from a personal perspective.  It wasn’t a trip of transactions; the vibe, the frequency of it all, was seemingly dominated by something more important to the moment than dollars and yuan.

It seemed critical for both leaders to convey their mutual alignment, ensuring and emphasizing the importance of no conflict between their nations, even if policy differences are present.  Both Rubio and Trump emphasized this overall tone.

To me, this makes sense given what I view as the current big picture.

President Trump is framing out an entirely new geopolitical alignment and both Russia and China are cornerstones in this construct.

The biggest losers right now, actual economic losers being hammered by the energy sector, are Europe the U.K, and all the commonwealth countries therein (including Canada).  China is essentially in statis and lacking the needed power within this dynamic.

China’s power was through their industrial production which has one fatal flaw, dependency on customers.

We saw this play out in 2018 when the G7 in Canada erupted on Trump because their economies were shrinking.  Their economies were shrinking because President Trump was confronting China (vis-a-vis tariffs and ASEAN replacement partnerships) and Beijing was responding by lowering prices and, unfortunately for the EU, stopping their purchases of industrial goods.

In 2018 and 2019 China stopped major purchases of industrial goods from the EU, that hurt the economy badly.  That was the background for that infamous picture in Canada at the G7 meeting.

Shinzo Abe and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) were fine.  Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand all picked up business as President Trump told manufacturers to move production out of China and into ASEAN nations.  That process was underway.

However, China started pulling back spending and devalued their currency as a strategy to lower prices and retain those manufacturers despite the tariffs.  It is important to understand how this impacted Europe, especially Germany.

Fast forward to 2026 and the current energy issue.  Once again President Trump has put the EU into a place of severe compromise, and without Russia being able to fill the void for the oil and gas missing from Venezuela and Iran, China would be in trouble.

Russia is filling that gap and China now in a position of dependency.  Thus, with Big Panda experiencing dependency for the first time it becomes critical for Trump to emphasize that all is ok, don’t worry, we’re all friends.  However, when Europe contracts it hits hard on China, and when China contracts it hits hard on Europe.

China’s long-term plan always included being able to infiltrate Europe, and they have been very successful.  However, Trump is changing things and former ‘western’ power centers in Europe and the UK are losing power rapidly.

The takeaway from this summit is President Trump and Chairman Xi, the two biggest apex predators in the world of economics, talking to each other about the importance of staying deconflicted as this geopolitical realignment takes place.  The nature of the relationship then becomes important, and that’s exactly the vibe that comes out of this trip.

Next up, Putin!