We talked on Monday about whether the Trump/Xi meeting would actually take place in Beijing, or if the trip would be cancelled or postponed (for a second time).

To this point, trade negotiations led by Bessent and Greer have been on neutral ground — Geneva, Madrid, Kuala Lumpur, Paris.

Trump landed in Beijing today, along with a delegation that includes Jensen Huang (Nvidia) and Elon Musk.

Here's what he posted on Truth Social heading into the trip:

"I will be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to 'open up' China so that these brilliant people can work their magic. I will make that my very first request."

"Open up" China.

That has been the false promise of the past few decades.

Every administration since China entered the WTO in 2001 has asked for it. The result has been the same. American companies China-influenced. Trillions in U.S. consumer spending channeled through Chinese manufacturing. IP theft on a mass scale. Supply chain dominance built. Critical commodities cornered, from rare earths to critical minerals to solar to batteries.

And with that, the Chinese economy has grown 50x over the past 35 years. Over the same period, the U.S. economy has grown just 5x.

That explosive growth made China the second largest economy in the world, and it was converging on the U.S. economy early in the pandemic. 

How did they do it?

It was no accident. They have executed on a plan to become the biggest, most powerful economy in the world. They did so, in large part, by undercutting the world on price, which enabled them to build an export monopoly. And they accomplished this by manipulating their currency — keeping it cheap. The world allowed it. They liked cheap stuff.

And they liked what China did with the dollars it collected from the cheap stuff. They plowed it into Treasuries, supplying cheap credit for U.S. consumers to buy more cheap stuff. And so the cycle has perpetuated through the years — transferring wealth from the U.S. (and the West) to China. 

That's the trade imbalance that has broken the global economy, and has funded China's influence building over the past decade.

And that's what Trump's trade deals are repairing and realigning.  

With that, it was five years ago that then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's Nixon Library speech — a call for "a new grouping of like-minded nations, a new alliance of democracies" to take action against the Chinese Communist Party.

Pompeo had been alliance-building with Australia, India, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea. His warning then: if we don't act, "the CCP will erode our freedoms and subvert the rules-based order that our societies have worked so hard to build."

The bilateral architecture Bessent has been building over the past year is the Pompeo framework. Tokyo this week. Korea today. The Quad expanded. Gulf states. Israel publicly moving "from aid to partnership."

As we've discussed in my notes, the aligned-partner architecture gets coordinated U.S. support: security, energy, dollar liquidity.

So going into this meeting, what's different?

What's different is what the Trump administration has done to shore up that architecture.

1) The dollar has been reaffirmed as the world's reserve currency.

And reinforced through the digital architecture — regulated Treasury-backed dollar stablecoins are now the global digital payment infrastructure.

2) The U.S. is the world's largest oil producer.

The Iran war has positioned the U.S. as the replacement supplier for Asian buyers who can't access Persian Gulf oil. Trump named the U.S. as "a big filling station" on Sunday. We have economic and military control over Venezuelan oil. And we will soon effectively control Iranian oil flows. 

So, Trump goes into meetings in a position of strength.  And he has the AI chip carrot  (Nvidia's H200 chips), the Taiwan stick (a $14 billion arms package), and the China tariff truce (currently suspended triple-digit tariffs) to leverage.