The two most powerful men in the world have met in Beijing.
But what was actually achieved?
Together, we have the chance to draw on these values to create a future of greater prosperity, cooperation and happiness.
It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Will Bain and as President Trump gets set to head home from China, is the path ahead any smoother for global trade?
President Xi Jinping has told a state banquet for Donald Trump that China and the United States should work together, not against each other.
Mr. Xi said the relationship between the two countries was the world's most important.
Today, President Trump and I had in-depth exchanges on China-US relations and international and regional dynamics.
We both believe that the China-US relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world.
We must make it work and never mess it up.
Both China and the United States stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation.
Our two countries should be partners rather than rivals.
Translator reading President Xi's speech there.
Well, in return, President Trump struck a positive note inviting the Chinese leader to visit the White House in September.
The American and Chinese people share much in common.
We value hard work.
We value courage and achievement.
We love our families and we love our countries.
Together, we have the chance to draw on these values to create a future of greater prosperity, cooperation and happiness and peace for our children.
We love our children.
This region and the world, it's a special world with the two of us, united and together.
Well, if you were with us on the program on Wednesday, you know we were setting up where the talks could have gone, everything from AI to trade and, of course, the ending of the war in Iran and the potential issues around the future of Taiwan.
And yet at the end of all of this.
Some of those really big economic, trade and business issues.
They didn't seem to be necessarily directly addressed.
To work out where we are at the end of all of this, we've assembled a panel of guests for you on the programme.
Mary Lovely is with us.
Mary is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute think tank in Washington DC, formerly the co-editor of the China Economic Review.
Brad Setzer is with us as well.
Brad from the Washington-based Council for Foreign Relations, here in the UK this week though, and Kerry Leahy, economist at Columbia University in New York.
As always, on a Thursday, back with us on World Business Report.
Thanks all for being with us on the programme.
Brad, why don't you set us out?
There was lots of talk coming into this about the big economic debates, if nothing else, about the race for AI, etc.
Are we any further forward on any of that after a couple of days of talks?
Not obviously.
I guess we have to see what comes out of the final statements tomorrow.
But as of now we've had an aircraft deal which was 100 expected but whose volume and size has been smaller than expected.
Nothing much substantive around any of the other outstanding irritants to the relationship.
And frankly, the far more substantive summit to date was the meeting between Xi and Trump in Busan Korea, which marked the de-escalation point from the tariff war of Trump's first year.
So I almost view this as the celebration of the Busan de-escalation, not as an indicator of any further progress.
And just before I get the others top line Brad, I saw you had a good couple of thoughts on this on X earlier about the size of that deal for Boeing.
We were saying last night on the program that Kelly Ortberg, the chief exec, was one of those as part of the kind of caravan traveling with President Trump.
You were slightly underwhelmed, it looked like, by the numbers that were in that deal.
So China has not really placed a major order for aircraft since the Trump's first term trade war.
So there's a lot of accumulated demand.
Boeing was looking for an order that would have had a headline number of closer to 500, not the 200 that was announced.
They were looking for like 100 wide bodies and an awful lot of narrow bodies.
And so I think relative to expectations, this announcement underwhelmed.
But, to be fair, there are two summits and maybe President Xi is splitting the order, so to speak, and he'll deliver the other expected half in September.
Mary Lovely in Washington, what was your kind of top line takeaway from the last couple of days?
Well, I certainly agree with Brad and his assessment.
I do note that President Xi likes to stress the importance of the US-China bilateral relationship and President Trump seemed to acknowledge that.
She also really likes to drill down on the fact that trade between the two countries is win-win.
And that has been something that the U.S. has really questioned over the last 10 years.
President Trump in particular has said that they take advantage of us and et cetera, et cetera.
Yet today we heard him talk about how the two sides can work together for the betterment of children in both countries.
And lastly, we had Xi talking about how we're partners instead of rivals.
And President Trump certainly did not contradict that.
So I think that today the relationship overall was portrayed in a way that meets the way the presidency likes to think about the relationship.
And Kerry Leahy, what was your takeaway?
Well, it's hard to disagree with Brad or Mary's take, which is somewhat disappointing.
Ironically, the big news is the transactional nature of the meeting regarding Boeing.
The more big picture items didn't seem to be addressed except in sort of a platitudinous manner.
And even I saw some headlines that there was some discussion about the situation in Taiwan, which has been an irritant for decades, when the Kuomintang finally moved into the island off the main shore after World War II.
So I don't think much is coming from that.
And finally, the president was not in a particularly strong position negotiating-wise because he's already embarked on and made some serious errors in the Middle East and comes across as someone who blundered in the last several months rather than someone who was succeeding.
I just would like to get your guys' thoughts on this, given how you've set this up, too.
We were talking to Andy Gere on the programme on Wednesday.
Andy's an independent economist based in Shanghai, and it was interesting and particularly Mary hearing you talk talk about how President Xi's tried to portray it, I suppose, as a win-win, and just where the business leaders and where their heads are at in China at the moment.
This is what Andy told us last night.
Chuanjian Guo means building the nation.
The reason people are saying that is that Chinese didn't believe they could do all that stuff before Trump came along.
When Trump basically blocked the access to all these tech products, China had to do it on their own.
And over the last few years, Chinese have become more and more successful in terms of chip designs, chip equipment materials, jet engines and now AI.
So the confidence level in China is very, very strong.
So Mary, where Andy was starting with, that is this nickname that the Chinese public have got for President Trump nation builder, kind of giving China a new confidence, he was saying there.
Well, I think the Chinese confidence was really boosted quite a bit by last year, where their export controls on rare earth, minerals and permanent magnets really forced the US to stand down both on tariffs and on expansion of export controls.
I was in China in January as well as last November, and the mood was incredibly confident.
And I think we see that today, especially with President Xi addressing the Taiwan issue so early in the meeting and so publicly.
So I do think that that is a very true statement about how the Chinese public views the relationship, as well as the Chinese leadership.
They feel they have a very strong hand vis-a-vis the Americans right now.
And yet Kerry both sides their economies, probably since the last meeting right in 2017, in more precarious positions than they were before, under more pressure, perhaps more accurately than they were before.
Well, yes.
Obviously with China.
People like us say that they need to balance their economy away from export-driven manufacturing more towards the inward-looking consumer, and that really hasn't happened.
In the case of the US, given the typical consumers facing much higher prices online on energy-related products and from the tariff and the confidence, at least according to one measure, is about as low as it has been in recorded history.
It's not a happy time to be a U.S. consumer, particularly this summer.
Brad?
Look, I think there are two overarchingly important things to note here.
The first is beyond what Mary noted about how China effectively weaponized its control over the supply of key minerals.
China also took a hefty tariff punch and handled it pretty well.
Chinese export growth last year was quite strong, much faster than global trade growth.
Now, that's not necessarily a sign of strength.
It's a sign that china needs exports.
But the tariffs failed to knock china's export machine off its office key like its trajectory, And I think that's in part because China's currency is incredibly, in my view, undervalued and that has propelled China's exports to places other than the United States.
And then I think the second key thing is that this particular dialogue seems to have been incredibly focused on narrow commercial concerns.
They're important.
Boeing needs to sell aircraft.
But there are broader issues the issue about China's over-reliance on exports and inability to generate consumption, about America's inability to control its fiscal deficits.
And these broader issues are going to be important if the US and China really want to have a healthy, long-term relationship.
I think the president is overly focused on the fall in the bilateral trade deficit.
Hasn't focused enough on these global issues, the fact that Chinese goods go around globally.
American tariffs.
The final point is just that Trump promised or campaigned on something like a 50% tariff on China.
For the fact that, for now, the tariffs are down to 10, in part because of the Supreme Court's ruling the new tariffs of this term.
That's been an incredible victory for China.
China wasn't singled out.
It doesn't now have higher tariffs than the rest of the world.
Unlike last year.
And so in that sense, I think there's basis for China thinking that it stood up to President Trump's trade war and came off the better.
To Brad's point Mary, is that one of the few things that we can maybe take away from this week?
That actually that divergence and divergence between each other divergence in terms of their need for each other is getting greater and then actually different parts of the world are having to sort of pick sides more than ever.
Well, I mean, I think it depends on what the U.S. does next.
I do agree that I think this meeting for those of us who think about the longer term issues in the relationship the meeting today is this whole visit is a bit of a lost opportunity and quite frustrating.
They're not addressing the larger issues, both about their own macro economies, particularly the Chinese economy and its over-reliance on net exports.
And, in the US economy, the need to decide how we're going to de-risk de-couple, de-whatever from China.
It's interesting that we have reports that Secretary Besant has been teasing that they're cut tariffs on China and that we may see investment Chinese investment in non-sensitive sectors.
I mean here in Washington.
It's very hard to figure out what consensus there is on which sectors are non-sensitive.
So there's a lot of very serious issues to really be dealt with on both sides.
And today, I think They haven't been really dealt with.
No, I think, as a result, we're going to talk more about those autos and all those kind of issues as well, aren't we?
Thanks all for your time.
Really appreciate it.
Mary Lovely, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute.
Brad Setzer at the Washington-based Council for Foreign Relations.
We'll have some more from Kerry Leahy at Columbia University a little later on in the programme.
You're listening to World Business Report on the BBC World Service.
Well, let's take you to Cuba now then, where protests have broken out in Havana as the country deals with its worst rolling blackouts in decades.
Cuba's energy minister admitted on state-run TV that they've run out of diesel and fuel, as a US-led blockade of oil to the country has squeezed supply.
Havana resident Rodolfo Alfonso gave his reasons for joining those protests.
We've gone more than 40 hours without electricity.
I live in a community where there are many elderly people, many of them bedridden.
There are many children.
Food is going bad inside the refrigerators, the little food that can be obtained.
The country's situation is well known and well.
It gave us the motivation to come out and see if, even by banging a pot, they would give us at least three hours of electricity.
Well, Jorge Pignon joins us.
Jorge is a former senior oil executive with the likes of Shell and Amoco Oil, now at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas in Austin.
Jorge, great to have you on World Business Report.
Thanks for being with us.
Thank you, Will.
How severe is the situation at the moment then?
It's really critical.
You know, a few months ago and even late last year, we were having blackouts here and there because of technical failures in the system.
But now it's really not only the technical failure of the old 40 plus year unit, but now it's the lack of fuel.
And there is very little you can do about that.
Cuba has lost its supply, historical supply, from the former Soviet Union back 30 years ago.
It has lost supply from Venezuela.
It has lost supplies from Mexico.
So basically there is literally a fuel blockade.
Well, I know you guys at the Energy Institute track that.
Is it literally or have they literally run out of fuel as far as you're aware?
You know, you track the tankers in and out the island.
Oh, yes.
No, we originally thought that Orocero, the zero hour, was going to be in late March.
And here we are today, two months, almost two months later.
So they have really found how to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
I don't know where they are now, Will, but I mean, the situation is critical.
There's no question that there is no fuel.
There is no fuel for even the fuel trucks that deliver the fuel to some of the thermoelectric power plants.
They don't have enough fuel to get those trucks delivered.
So the situation is critical.
I don't know how they can survive another couple of weeks.
Well, this offer then, that the Cuban government says to the BBC that it's reviewing 100 million from the United States in terms of aid.
How far does that go to scraping that barrel?
To keep stretching your terminology.
Well, what I'm betting on is that the United States will use its pressure with Venezuela and that you will see the US asking Venezuela to supply again oil to Cuba.
Who else can do it?
I think they can send humanitarian aid in food and medicine and those sort of things.
But key is fuel, particularly diesel.
And the US has the leverage with Venezuela today to tell Venezuela to do that, to come back to what it used to do many years ago, before Maduro, and supply Cuba with the needed fuel.
Who's going to pay for it?
That's another issue between the US and Venezuela.
But if they want to get Cuba out of this situation urgently tomorrow, the only supplier and provider would be the US, via Venezuela.
And it sounds like from what you're saying, that's urgent already.
Yes, no question about it.
Reports that we're getting from Havana.
Just like in your recent interview here, you showed things are really drastic.
People are looking in trash cans for food.
There is no medicines.
Even with the solar help from the solar panels that China has been donated for the last 12 months or so, there is literally no power.
Early this morning, the eastern system collapsed.
So it is very, very, very tough for the Cuban people today.
Jorge, always appreciate your time.
Jorge Pignon there, former senior oil executive, now at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas.
And if you want a little bit of the history of how Cuba got to that point with its power system, Jorge did us a great interview on our Business Daily program.
If you search for the Business Daily podcast and search for Cuba economic crisis, you will find a lot more of it.
Well, let's turn to something in theory a bit more cheerful, although there are some economic pressures around this event too, because the Men's World Cup, Football World Cup, is in the US, Canada and Mexico less than a month away now.
But many in the US hospitality industry are starting to get nervous about whether hosting the expanded event
48-nation tournament will live up to the promised economic boost.
The American Hotel and Lodging Association represents some of the biggest players in hospitality, including the likes of Hilton, Marriott and Wyndham hotels, as well as those businesses right down to the small family-run BBs.
Of their 30,000 members across the US, They surveyed.
80% said they were seeing lower demand for bookings than they'd expected.
Concerns about the cost of transport and tickets for the tournament amongst those cited.
Rosanna Maietta is the chief executive of the AHLA and she told us why she thought that was.
I think there's a lot of factors that we're looking at, right?
Some of that is outside of the US.
I think there are some unclear communication perhaps, or misinformation, around what it takes to get to the US, depending on what country you reside in, what visa requirements you have, how long it might take to get a visa, whether there are costs associated with that.
There's for sure been some misinformation around whether or not your social media will be reviewed in the US, which it won't.
And so I think there is certainly some of that happening.
And, of course, with what's happening in Iran and the cost of air tickets here in the States.
I think some of those considerations are perhaps making people pause.
The other unique factor with this year's games is that you know it's taking place across three countries, right?
That's a little bit uncharted territory for us.
So not really understanding from a consumer perspective.
Are people just waiting to see where their teams will end up before they make those bookings?
And is that part of the shorter booking window that we're seeing?
Have members got price wrong as well?
There's certainly been a sense, say here in the UK.
I've listened to some of our phone-ins on domestic radio where lots of Scotland and England fans feel that they're kind of being fleeced by the tournament full stop.
You know that the tickets themselves are extremely expensive, that transport is bonkersly expensive.
And then you put on top an expensive hotel as well.
And people are just saying, you know what?
I can't stretch to that.
Sure.
I mean, these are tough times for a lot of people, especially if you're thinking about going with a family, and it can be pretty pricey.
But we've seen this before.
It's not just the World Cup.
These large scale, especially global events have gotten pricier.
And is there time to talk to partners?
Because presumably some of these partners say, for example, transport networks, the very famous ones have been what's going on in Boston and what's going on in New York in terms of getting to MetLife Stadium, isn't it?
With the pricing and things like that?
Presumably, these are the type of authorities that you guys work with week out every year as well, don't you?
Is there any sort of conversation with them being, come on guys, help us out a little bit here?
Absolutely.
I mean, I think that is certainly an area of concern for us from a hotel perspective, right?
When you start.
Some cities are thinking about adding a World Cup tax, and especially targeting hotels.
Or as you mentioned, the transportation, how do you get to and from the stadiums and parking?
I mean, we think those are discouraging people from going and showing up.
And we think that that's bad business and not the welcome message that we should be sending as hospitality companies.
You certainly don't want people to feel like they're getting charged everywhere they go.
So we're calling on particularly those cities that are thinking about extra taxes around this time.
This is a bad time to be doing that.
Is there time to reverse some of this stuff to perhaps help firm up that demand, do you think?
I, you know, I'm ever the optimist, so I would say for sure, right?
Certainly we have seen that when there is a large public backlash, people back down and change course.
So we're hoping that some of that comes to play.
Rosanna Maietta, the chief executive of the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
Well, Kerry Leahy is still with us at Columbia University in New York.
And we're also joined for the last few minutes of the program here on World Business Report by Emlyn Peters-Vorst.
A football fan from the Dutch Caribbean territory of Curaçao with a population of just 150,000.
Curaçao, the smallest country ever to qualify for the World Cup.
So this year's competition, a rare appearance potentially for it and its fans, and turning out to be quite an expensive one, Emlyn.
Thanks for being with us.
Thank you very much for the invite.
I feel honored.
And on behalf of the population of Curacao, we thank you very much for letting us tell something about this first adventure ever in the history of human beings.
So really exciting, obviously, from a football perspective.
And then was there a downer when you started to look at Rosanna Maietta's colleagues hotel prices, flight prices, all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, we are a little bit prepared.
It all started...
In the first instance to be around $1,300 to $1,500 per person.
We fly directly on June the 12th.
And so we will have one day, the 13th, and the match would be on the 14th, and we come back the 15th of June, back to Curacao.
But now we are talking about 2500 per person, including the flight, the hotel and the entrance ticket.
But we are expecting to pay more, as they may introduce some southern football charges or taxes or fees, or whatever you call it.
Well Kerry, we heard Rosanna Maietta talking about that and also where you are in New York.
The transport costs have been a big one.
I mentioned it in there as well, you know.
I can't even quite work out the multiplier on what the train tickets have gone up by for a 20-minute train journey.
I mean, what's the debate around it in the US media?
Is it embarrassing people slightly?
It certainly is.
I mean, you can't get around the fact that, you know, people are getting gouged.
It's going on in Boston.
It's in the New York area, too.
And you can't use dynamic pricing on, I think, those seats, since it's run by effectively, a company, a utility or wing of the local government.
So it's not as if the hotels can cut their prices because no one's showing up.
At a thousand a night might like 800 a night.
So it's a mess and it's made worse by obviously, what's going on in the Middle East, because the airlines can't adjust their prices favorably, because they're absorbing costs and cutting flights.
Is it doing anything, Emlyn, to demand then for people who want to come on your trips with you?
Yes, it's a little bit awkward to think that you're not sure what the final cost will be.
We have been experiencing increases up to now.
That are not prices that we are used to pay.
But still, we all would like to keep going and to have our flight and to be there.
But it's something that, you know, you cannot be sure about the final cost.
Hopefully, it won't be doubled.
Kerry, what do you think?
Do you think there's political pressure to what Rosanna Maietta was saying as well, that maybe there is time to turn some of this around before the tournament starts?
Oh, I think absolutely.
You can turn it around the hotel prices and perhaps to a lesser extent, the ground transportation.
So I think they can turn it around and get a better outcome than they're looking at right now.
Yeah, well, we'll be tracking that.
And I know the team on Business Daily looking at the program on this soon as well.
Kerry, always appreciate your time.
Thanks so much.
Kerry Leahy, economist at Columbia University there.
And Emlyn, enjoy the World Cup.
Have a great trip when you get there.
Emlyn Peters-Vorst, football fan from Curacao, leading those trips out there as well.
Big thanks from our team tonight.
Neil, Jay, Amy, who's been driving the programme.
Thanks to all of you for listening to World Business Report.
