Trump vs China Are U.S. Allies Turning to Beijing Bill Bishop Explains

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To break it all down, I'm joined by Bill Bishop, one of the most respected observers of China. We unpack what Starmer actually gained, what Beijing is offering to US allies, and whether Washington is losing its grip. From minerals and trade leverage to tariffs, alliances, and China's long game, this is a conversation about power, perception, and what comes next. Take a listen. Has the news been getting you down? I'm Megan McCartle and I'm here to help. I'm the host of a news show from Washington Post opinion, called reasonably optimistic, and it's an antidote to the pessimism that's riddling America right now. I'm a colonist of the post, and I've been writing about economics, technology, and public policy for decades now. So every Wednesday, I'm going to talk to people who see a path forward. I'm going to talk to inventors, entrepreneurs, politicians, and probably some wonky types like me if I'm being totally honest. Congress to me was a very entrepreneurial place. It's like Shark Tank, but a lot less glamorous. When nerds get rich and powerful, they can't help but get involved in politics. I want to talk about how we can get unstuck and live up to the country's many promises. It does seem to me that there is some awakening of a desire to act together to solve problems where they are. If we believe in this country, it's worth fighting for. Join me Wednesdays on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. It's in here. We're live. We're rocking and rolling. Everybody is super eager for this one. So I'm really grateful to have you on the show, Bill. So we've got... Thanks for having me. We've got Bill Bishop, who is one of the preeminent experts on China. And I think last week, everyone sort of woke up to the new world order. We've been seeing it happen creep and creep. We've seen the creep, right? But when you have Kierstarmer, Prime Minister, in the UK, the Labour Prime Minister, visit China. He's obviously sending a message to Washington. What were you thinking when you saw that news, when you saw his meeting, when he met with Xi? No, it's interesting. I think that from the science perspective, this isn't necessarily anything particularly sudden. They've had a stream of... A stream? No, no, a stream of European leaders arriving in Beijing or on their way. I think a French President Macron was there, I think, in December. You've had the Finnish Prime Minister was there a few days before Starmer. The German Chancellor is heading there in a couple of weeks, I think. And so this is... And then, of course, you had the Canadian Prime Minister there, who had some... made some comments that I think were more stark than either Macron or the UK Prime Minister made in terms of the changing world order as they see it. So I think this is just a... On the one hand, it makes sense for these countries to have... to try and have stable relations with the PRC, but at the same time that it's coming amidst the backdrop of what is a... I think a much more turbulent relationship with their traditional island in the US. And so I think last week, you know, the optics of the visit, specifically the UK Prime Minister's visit, were frankly not particularly favorable, I think, for the British side. The Prime Minister really looked like a supplicant. He didn't actually get much. You know, he's on... The Prime Minister's on some stack. Kierst Farmer is on some stack. And he posted... He probably put it in the link. And he posted a piece over the weekend just titled China, where he... He was sort of a political defense of his trip to China. And why it was important to have a more sophisticated relationship with China, and that they wasted eight years of sort of doing nothing. Which again, is... I mean, politicians all exaggerate, right? That's what you... You cover that on a regular basis, right? The hyperbole. But I think that ultimately, this... You know, the... The Brits got... The... Among the big wins for the Brits were the tariffs on whiskey went from 10% to 5%. Which again, I... I don't think you can have a much of an impact, but that certainly can be touted as a win. They cleamed to something billion dollars worth of investments and to something billion dollars worth of exports. But again, it's not really clear. You know, we know from other national leaders who make big claims about investment and trade deals. Yeah. You know, we're not actually sure where to... We're not sure investment that never happened. But the really... What you have is, I think, over the last few months, certainly from the way the British... Parts of the British political establishment have been attacking the current prime minister. You have what they claim is really a bit of a cow taming on towards China. You have the... Last year, the UK government rolled out this sort of foreign... Interference... Foreign Registration here where foreign actors had to register. And there were the highest here. Originally, people thought it would be China would be included in that. And then it ended up only being Iran and Russia. Because of very special interest that were concerned, specifically, in the financial sector that were concerned that putting China in the highest here would cause problems for business. You had a spy case that was... Was effectively dissolved on the eve of trial last fall. Because the... You know, again, you never underestimate the potential for a real cock-up. I did a live on this with one of the actual expert witnesses for the prosecution a few months ago. But really, it was more, I think, that the British government had sort of changed downgraded its assessment of the threat from China. And so it was no longer... The prosecution was no longer able to argue that these two men had committed crimes that they were alleged to have committed. And so that case was dropped. And so that... And then, of course, there was this massive new embassy that the Chinese purchased this property, the real mitt, several years ago. And it's been stuck in kind of planning, perkatory. And the Chinese side had made it very clear that there would be no storm of visit until planning was unlocked. And this embassy was allowed to go forward. And so, of course, the decision was made two weeks ago. And then the trip was confirmed. UK Prime Minister Stormer and a delegation, I think, of 60 business executives then showed up in Beijing about a week later. Yeah, I mean, the British press is pretty brutal. We all know that. Very skilled at being brutal. Yeah, it's exactly. That's where you cut your teeth, right, Fleet Street. And the Daily Mail, they really, you know, slapped him across the face for going there. They felt like he came home empty handed, like he said. The Tories... It is obviously a Tory paper. Tories have always been pretty hawkish on China. When is the last time a Prime Minister from the UK has visited China or she? I think this was, it was eight years, eight or seven or eight years. Of course, part of that was COVID, but then part of it was just the general, there was, you know, the general downturn in the relationship, you know, there are issues over Hong Kong, there are issues over, there's a UK citizen, Jimmy Lai, who's been convicted of various national security-related crimes in Hong Kong. And they're awaiting sentencing. He's in his mid to late 70s. Health isn't great. He's most likely going to die in prison. Yeah. And again, this is another area where there were some voices in the UK that we're hoping that the UK Prime Minister would be a little tougher on that, but clearly he says he raised it privately, but you know, nothing has come of that. And so I think ultimately that, you know, the UK signed on to the Biden administration of roads to China, trying to build more of a united front to take sort of a more of a concerted tougher line towards China. This then goes back, I think, to your opening question, which is that for these countries, you know, that the phrase people use is middle powers like the UK, like, like Canada, why, you know, the question becomes why are we sacrificing some of these commercial interests with the second largest economy in the world when we're being treated, you know, as I see it, they're being treated like, increasingly like dirt by their traditional ally that the US. And so, you know, you can, I think you can make up pretty cogent argument for why there should be more engagement while it is important that the UK and the PRC are talking or Canada and the PRC are talking. I think the mistake is if you see the the leaders of those countries decide that somehow the PRC is more stable or more reliable than the US's. And I'm not, you know, UK Prime Minister Starrmer, I think he's been pretty clear that's not where they are. The Canadian Prime Minister a little bit, not less clear. And, you know, you think about it from Beijing's perspective, you have two of the historic historic Starrches US allies, two NATO members and also two members of the Five Eyes Intelligence Channel lines, the UK, Australia, UK, New Zealand, Canada, the US. So just in the last three weeks, you've had the UK and the Canadian leaders in China effectively, you know, it's always bending the need of Beijing. And so, you know, whether or not, you know, this isn't like some sort of binary all of a sudden they flip, but it's it's progress towards opening up or exploiting growing fissures in the US relationship with these two Starrches allies. And that, you know, that's a positive for Beijing. However, you cut it. Yeah. Donald Trump called the meeting very dangerous, dangerous to whom. Like, I mean, that's that's the question so what. So now we're going to threaten them again. You know, we supposedly have a trade deal and where does this go? And where is it? Okay. On the one hand, the US is cutting a trade deal. You know, President Trump has clearly focused on cutting a big deal with China. He is, you know, his administration has put a hold on all sorts of actions against China because they don't want to mess up the current trade deal. They don't want to mess up the April, you know, big state visit to China that President Trump is planning. So the one of the questions to be, well, these are sovereign countries. Why don't they have the right to also cut deals? Yeah. And, and, you know, I think that ultimately, you know, you get past the headlines and the two countries, at least the UK, I think there still are constructive conversations underway so that it won't be this kind of, you know, you can run the rickshaw. Oh, excuse me, my dog has come back and wants to treat. I apologize. Tashi, come on, buddy. But ultimately, I think that the, my guess will be that the UK will manage the US relationship a little bit better than I think the, the premise of Karni has been doing. And so what Trump threatens? I mean, again, when you look at like, you know, there are other things that we need from the, from the UK, you know, we're working with them on Ukraine. And so I think it is just a, you know, the President, President Trump can make all these threats, but it's what, what getting beyond the sort of the pretty nasty partisan UK press and there's a political attacks in the UK. What Prime Minister Starmler agreed to in terms of substance wasn't really that interesting. Okay. So, you know, and Starmler also said he won't choose between the US and China. Is that really sustainable? Or do you think Trump will force him to make a choice? I mean, I think that ultimately, I think that I don't think the US President Trump administration is, is crazy enough to try and make them somehow choose because I mean, ultimately, you know, again, what, what the UK has it, sorry, what do you agree has stopped? What do you agree, UK agree to in this trip? It doesn't really view up, right? The Canadian agreement is a little worse because or potentially riskier because the Canadians are now allowing in a certain number of these connected new energy vehicles, these EVs, which the US has doesn't allow in the country. The UK is already a large, has already a very large market for Chinese EVs. And so, and so this has been going on for years in the UK. So again, it's not clear what, on what grounds the President Trump would have to sort of threaten the UK over this over, over Starmer's visit because as bad as the optics are, it isn't like Starmer is suddenly turning over the country to the Chinese. I mean, you know, even things like the UK, this new embassy that the UK has approved for the PRC, you've seen, I think that the House Select Committee on China wrote, you know, issued a letter talking about some of the risks and the biggest risks around this embassy that have been highlighted publicly or around these fiber optic cables that run adjacent to the site and the concern is the Chinese could somehow top into them and they are carrying sensitive data. The US government, my understanding, has not actually, you know, the US intelligence committee has not issued any public statement. The UK intelligence services has said the risk, they can mitigate the risks from these cables. And so again, from parts of the US government, it's again, it's not at all clear that they're that upset with what's what's going on. So, you know, ultimately, I think so far, you know, Starmer has shown a pretty good ability to kind of modify President Trump, I think. And then you've got today or tomorrow, I think we've got a we've got a rare earth summit, a critical mineral summit in DC. I believe in UK is part of that. The US, the US administration is trying to put together a pretty significant consortium to deal with or to try mitigate the risks from the the PRC strangle hold on, you know, critical middle supply chains. And so, you know, moving past these sort of truth social, you know, depending on, you know, what time of day threats he made. Ultimately, again, I think, I mean, never say never with President Trump, but it would certainly be unfortunate. I think someone unjustified to sort of go, you know, get get really harsh on UK because this trip again optics are great. Substance really doesn't seem that particularly interesting or problem I get this point. And just frankly, from a, you know, I'll be honest with you and this is something you've covered a lot, is Starmer's bigger problem is Epstein and Mendelssohn. And ultimately, you know, there's a lot of us back to Epstein. But ultimately, it goes back to Mendelssohn. You know, he was the US, he was UK's ambassador to the DC for at the beginning of the Trump administration, right? And, you know, he had as his son of his clients, he had Chinese interests as clients, including Huawei. He, Starmer and Bayanip were the bigger China problem because of stuff that comes out of these Mendelssohn revelations from Epstein files than his China trip. As you said, all of those back to this just, just, just, just, just, just steam network. Yeah, network. Yeah, because he couldn't, he couldn't have lived without his network or sustained what he was doing without this network of powerful people. Right. Just to go back to what you mentioned about the rare earth minerals you're talking about the new mineral reserve that worth nearly $12 billion. That Bloomberg wrote about, yeah. Yeah, you think you think it could actually counter China's dominance on the other parts of this? Okay. I mean, I think there's a real, there's a, there's a real impetus now among many like mining countries to, to, to finally try and break China's stranglehold on these, on these critical minerals. Even though China's been telling the world, they've been going to do this for basically the last 15 years or so. And everyone, you know, lots of, there were lots of academic and policy sort of stunts, lots of admiration of the problem. No one really did anything until, you know, basically the, the CGPing called Trump Ambassador's Bluff last year and, um, uh, proved that he has a lot of power with the US. And so basically was again, achieved victory in the first round of this latest US China trade war. And so I think that the Trump administration was pretty sober by how much, you know, you remember early on last year in the beginnings of the, you know, I think around Terraflameration day last April, yeah, transit secretary, best it, you know, and want to, you know, honestly, perhaps one of the dumbest statements of the year said that China was playing with a hand of a pair of twos. And then very quickly, I think he realized actually, China was playing with a lot of leverage and was able to call the Trump administration's Bluff around the earth and force effectively a truce. And not only a truce for the deal that was announced the last November in South Korea, but also for the US, for the Trump administration to put, basically put a stop on any new measures that might upset the Chinese around technology, um, around certain types of sanctions around, trade investigations from semiconductors to pharmaceuticals. And so, you know, there is a real recognition in the US government and allied capitals that this is a massive risk that the Chinese control over the critical minerals, rare supply chains is a huge point of leverage for them and a massive risk. And so I think at this point now, you do have enough minds focused that there will be much, a much more significant effort to try and break that triangle told, but it's not something that's going to happen in a year or two years, right? I mean, you had Secretary Besent a few months ago, went on CNBC, he was one of these rarest facilities and, you know, startups since South Carolina, he held up a magnet and said, we're making magnets here now. And they are, but they're making, you know, not very many, right? And so it's still a ways off, but this is an important initiative. And so I think we should all, it's actually positive. And this goes back to, on the one hand, you have, say President Trump, he'll threaten on to social, you know, yeah. But at the same time, the actual bureaucracies and many areas are still working together. And so that's, that's where I think it's important to not to sort of look at the relationship is talking about the UK is, you know, it's not binary. There's a lot of different facets. And in many areas, the US and the UK are still working together around what they consider to be challenged or they've diagnosis challenges with China. So what tools does the US have like terrorist trade restrictions, security pressures, like how effective are these tools anyway? Being an adult sucks. Adults, they have to work all day. When adults get mail, it always builds and builds suck. Sure, but we've got a driver's license. Enjoy 4.9% APR representative with up to four years free servicing on the Alpine A290 plus range. At your Alpine store, PCP, mobileized financial services, order between the 6th and 23rd of February, 2026, TSD supply, visit alpinehypncars.co.uk for more information. So the US has, you know, they're in addition to tariffs, there are a fair number of areas where the US still has a lot of leverage around key inputs that the Chinese need. I mean, clearly, semiconductors are one and while we, the Trump administration has not relaxed the controls on semiconductor equipment, manufacturing equipment that the Biden administration put in place or the actually the first Trump did and then the Biden administration expanded upon them. They did allow, of course, not the most cutting edge, but very good. Better than the Chinese can make in video chips, so now we sold it to China again. They had some leverage if before South Korea, the South Korea deal last fall when things were suddenly got pretty dicey and it looked like a deal they thought they had was falling apart. The US threatened their restrictions on exports around commercial aircraft, jet engines, certain types of chemicals. There are areas where the US has leverage, but the problem, you know, part of it, the problem is using that leverage would cause a lot of pain for US companies, but then at the same time, the Chinese have really quite scuffly built over the last 15 to 20 years significant leverage over key supply chains in the US with their rare earth related. They're really their dominance of the rare earth's processing industry and then where it rarers magnets industry. And that, I think, ultimately, the Chinese have the ability to cause significant chaos in important parts of the US industrial manufacturing industries in this country. And that is where I think the Trump administration saw that and that's where they blinked last fall. And the Chinese were not, you know, the tariffs hurt them. They would prefer to have lower tariffs. They've gotten to a point where with their, the US kind of deal, they've gotten to a point where the tariffs are, you know, they like to be lower, but they're manageable, right? They can adjust. They can adjust and they can, they don't like air about it. It's a communist country. There's people aren't. Well, I mean, a lot of the exports come from companies that, you know, that do care about profit, but they have, you know, they have the ability to operate on very low margins. They, the government is giving certain subsidies to like export credits, export support. They also have the ability to transcript through other countries that have lower, lower tariffs in the US. And so there's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's not ideal. They would like to be lower, but it is not sort of, you know, oh my god, the tariffs are 45% where they're now and therefore all these Chinese businesses are going to, you know, it's going to collapse, right? Because again, there was a, I think, um, starting at the beginning of the Trumpness, this, this Trump administration last year, um, there I think was a pretty significant error in the diagnosis of the, um, fragility of the Chinese economy, where I think the US side really overestimated how much leverage, um, they had in underestimated levers of Chinese hat, specifically reverse. And that's where we ended up by the end of last year into today. Um, really a, a pretty significant truth that ultimately, I think, is, you know, if, if you're on the Chinese leadership side, I think you have to say that or you have to believe that, um, they did it like as bad as good a job as they could have hoped for in managing the Trump administration the first year. And then at the same time, because of the way the Trump administration has been stressing traditional alliances and traditional partners, um, it's creating a lot of space for the Chinese to, um, improve their position with countries like the UK, countries like Canada that more traditionally would have been, um, at least even recently in the Biden administration, where more, um, much more taking sort of taking a united front against China, um, with the US. Okay. So just a quote, like, do you think that China is actively poaching our allies, or are they just filling a vacuum right now in terms of the leadership? Well, I think that the Chinese are actively trying to, you know, there you saw it from the, the speech that it, the vice-comer, um, uh, Holy Funky that Davos last month, you hear and regularly see it in the sort of the way they're talking, the CGPings talking and meetings with leaders, the, um, sort of what they're putting out in the official media, if it's the propaganda channels, is really, you know, they're, they're preparing China as the force for stability and predictability in the world, right? Against this, you know, you know, they describe the US as the biggest source of visibility now in the world. And, you know, when they look at, I don't think they believe that they're suddenly, you know, flip, you know, flip a traditional US ally to a, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna give up on the US and we're gonna come on to ally China. But again, that, that isn't their goal. They just want to be able to exploit the growing space between the US and the traditional allies and, you know, with, for example, you know, this UK trip, you know, there's the, the business deals, there's deals around people, the people exchanges, you know, you've already seen the UK government in preparations of a trip. They made some concessions around improving this embassy. This spy case was, was, withdrawn. Again, the US, UK government will say had nothing to do with this trip. But certainly from China's perspective, you know, I think you can see, okay, the UK is moving more towards a less of a aggressive, confrontational approach to China and more of a, we can do business with them, kind of approach, which is, which is, again, as best as they can hope for in the short term. And then over time, if the US keeps stressing these relationships with, you know, threats of, you know, whatever they may threaten to do over the UK's, the US, the US, to China or over Greenland, although maybe Greenland is now resolved, I don't know. But those just present opportunities for the Chinese, you know, you think about like water, they can just sort of sort of move into the cracks and the fishers that are created over time, they can sort of expand things and, and sort of change for them, you know, again, just make it so that these countries are more amenable and more compliant towards China's, China's offers and desires. Do you think the long-term strategy is to weaken, weaken Western alliances during this administration? I think, I think, I think honestly, if somebody's the long-term fascist, just to watch the US do it to themselves and then see where they can exploit those weaknesses. I think that is the, I think that is something they want. That has certainly been a goal. If you think about it in the last year, so the Biden administration, the Chinese side was getting extremely exercised over this talk about Asia expanding to NATO, because there was talk about having NATO open an office in, in, in, in, in, in, in Japan. A lot of talk about Taiwan. And now, of course, with Greenland, with Ukraine, you know, NATO itself is under stress. There's no more discussion of NATO expanding into Asia. That is a win for Beijing. But they didn't really have to do anything. It's kind of like the Democrats. They can just sit on their hands. During the, I, I will see if the Democrats are as smart as the Chinese are, sort of exploiting this, this chaos. Yeah. So have we ever seen versions of this playbook during prior US administrations? I'm guessing versus a different moment fundamentally than Apple. I think this is a different moment fundamentally. I mean, there certainly was, you know, China, you know, there's a lot of different things, sort of, coalesce at the same time, right? China has never been this powerful or this important or this influential in the world. You also, I think, you know, this second Trump administration is extremely anomaly in sort of US political history and in sort of US foreign policy. And so it's hard to find any period that is really directly analogous to what's going on. I mean, it really is, you know, Xi Jinping for years just like that used to sort of say that the world is changing in ways unseen in 100 years. And, you know, I mean, if you started saying that, maybe not quite a decade ago, and you know, he's right, right? I mean, look at what's going on. All these changes are accelerating. And, you know, this, this, whatever the previous world order was, you know, in a lot of it. And I think, you know, Canadian Prime Minister Karin in his speech, he sort of talked about how this, this, you know, rule space international order was sort of there, but not everyone necessarily always, not everyone, everyone actually lived up to it. And, you know, but you could at least have a fig leaf that it was there. I mean, the fig leaf is just gone. And then so now everyone I think is trying to figure out what's next. And so you have these middle powers like, you know, the countries in the UK, like to Pan who I think would much prefer a world where they can rely on the US, but also now in a position where they need to start thinking a lot more about how they hedge. And that's a, that's an own goal from the US. What I know you're talking about the middle powers, but what about South Korea, who is another, which was another one of our allies that we have a freed relationship now, looks like they're growing closer to she or being cracked out. I mean, you know, they're, they're not there. We have a, you know, treaty alliance with them. We have a lot of US troops in South Korea. They have a, you know, an existential threat across their border in North Korea. The current Prime Minister is more, I think sort of more known as being more leftist, more sympathetic to China when he came in. He's, you know, he's, he's again trying to hedge, but he's also, also trying to work with the US. And so it's more like, you know, these, these middle powers, I mean, they are stuck between two of large and difficult countries. And the challenge, I think, is when people get sort of, and this, this is part of because of the rhetoric and some of the stuff that Trump administration is doing. It makes it easy for certainly people who have a, you know, especially outside of the US who have a general, I think, sort of anti-US ban or disposition against the US to sort of compare the US and China as like in terms of political systems and the way they're treating dissent and the way they're treating just a lot of things internally. And I'm not going to defend by any sense what the Trump administration is doing. We're still not like China, right? That may happen. I certainly hope it doesn't, but we're not there yet. And so I think the hope, and, but the problem is, is the hope that somehow the US is going to revert to what it was. I mean, we're what? A year and a week or a year and 10 days if the Trump too. I mean, you know, it's going to get a lot worse. I mean, there's, there's not a lot of, I mean, I shouldn't say that, but it's certainly if you were had the bet, I think you would have to, the odds are high that it's going to get a lot worse here. Yeah, and it's actually one of the few powers President Trump will have with a Democratic Congress to deal with is, you know, foreign policy. I mean, it hasn't happened yet, but yes, we'll see. Okay, you're right. We'll see what happens. You sort of led me into my last and final question. So it's 2028 Trump's leaving office. What does the US China relationship look like? Another morning, another reminder, there's a gap to be careful of, but maybe it's time to bridge the one between your nine to five and your dream of living life on your own terms. At HSBC, we know ambition looks different to everyone, whether it's retiring early or leaving more for your family, we can help because when it comes to unlocking your money's potential, we know wealth. Search HSBC wealth today, HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity, HSBC UK current account holders only. You know, that's a great question and I think on the like, you know, if you think about the first Trump administration, the first year or so was really, there was a lot of attention, the first trade war, and then actually, you know, President Trump himself really seems to want to have a relatively positive relationship with China and with Xi Jinping. And so things, once they got the first trade deal done, things actually constabilized and then COVID happened. And then Trump blamed China for COVID and then things got, well, excuse me, things really kind of went off the rails. You know, from the Chinese perspective, I think again, they believe they're in a quite a good spot with the US, both in terms of the bilateral relationship, but also with the way that the US has been treating traditional partners, it'll allies and how that's creating space for China. You know, if this April visit goes off well, if Trump does go to China and, you know, I mean, the first, his first visit lot in turn one was like a state visit plus. So I don't know how they're going to top that, you know, they opened up the, I mean, one of these is funny, right? Is they gave him a private tour of the Forbidden City, they shut it down. He got to go into parts of the Forbidden City that like no foreign leaders get to go to, Starmer gets to go the Forbidden City, they don't even shut it down. His video, he makes, he's like all the tourists are sort of walking around, right? So it was, no, you're like, but so, but so, but TN, your question though is my point is I think that on the current factory, the Chinese could actually be pretty confident that there might actually be a sort of a longer term stabilization where they, you know, the US-Tanitary Relationship has, sort of, it didn't get as bad as they thought. The big issue of course is what happens around around Taiwan. And the, that one is, you know, as long as the, and I think as long as the Chinese side believes that there are political forces in Taiwan where that there may continue to be an opportunity for some sort of a peaceful, peaceful deal in the way that the, the mainland wants it in terms of what they call reunification, you know, then the Trump administration, it isn't, it isn't clear how, like, whether, it isn't clear how much support they're ultimately give Taiwan if there is the ability to have progress towards some sort of political deal. I mean, there, there's certainly, you know, the US has been selling, they've had a big arms package, arms sale to Taiwan in December, the National Defense Strategy doesn't talk about Taiwan, but it talks about the geography, the first island in the chain, in a way that makes it sound like they would defend Taiwan. But ultimately, if the Chinese side, if there isn't some, some event or some reason that the Taiwan issue becomes much more intense or gets, you know, gets closer to some sort of a, you know, whether it's a blockade or quarantine or God forbid, some sort of a conflict, I think that ultimately the US-Tire relationship can be the Chinese, I think, can think they can actually manage it relatively well. And, you know, for them, they're not expecting the relationship to get, like, good, like it used to be. They just want to keep it stable while they focus on building up their economy, reducing reliance on the US, picking off American allies, building their trade networks and their, you know, increasing other countries reliance on China while insulating their economy and their financial system from the US. And that isn't going to stop based on happy talk or a nice visit from President Trump. And so, they're very clear that this relationship is sort of in a long-term structural competition. But I do think after the first year or so, they've gotten more confident that they have, they're no how to manage Trump as administration. I worry, I think there's a chance they're overconfident. But, you know, again, we'll see. I mean, I'm so wary now of pretty thing anything the President Trump does. It's just like, you know, I mean, you look at what happened, Trump won. You look happened last year. But from the Chinese perspective, I have to say that they really do think they have President Trump's number. And at least so far, it's hard to argue with that. Yeah. Well, we're going to end on that note. Came right to the half hour. Thank you so much, Bill. This was a little... Thank you. No, I really happen to be on our big big big big fan happy subscribers. Yeah, I think here, I feel like I always learned so much from you and it felt like a really important topic. And I know, as you said, you know, the UK was not the first to visit, but one of our closest allies and was startling for a lot of Americans to see that. That's the thing. But then if the Starmer government falls because of Manus and Epstein, then maybe that the conservatives are pretty hawkish on China, so you never know, could flip quickly. That's right. Only Epstein can change this. Yes. Is that the answer? And if you want more Epstein news, go to my... Go to the red line. My latest on the guy leading the Epstein investigation, Jay Clayton, and how he is very closely tied with Leon Black, one of Epstein's closest allies who had to go... Leon Black had to leave his job because of his relationship. Who many picks Jay Clay into succeed him, the guy who's now in charge of the Epstein. It's all gross. Power-pleasing itself. Thank you for your coverage of it. It's all gross. Of course. Thank you for your great coverage show. Well, thanks everyone for watching. Thank you. And sign and become subscribers to both of our channels if you're not already. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That was another episode of the Terror Palm Airy show. Thanks for tuning in. I know it was a little different, but I hope you all learned something. I did too. You can support this show by following, subscribing, sharing it with all your friends. You can head to the red letter by going to tarotpalmary.com. You can sign up for my exclusive reporting straight to your inbox. It's how you keep me working doing my independent journalism. I want to thank my producer, Eric Abinate, Abby Baker for doing the research and social media, preparing me for this interview, Adam Stewart on the graphics and Dan Rosen, my manager. See you again soon. Hi, I'm Tamsen Fidel, journalist and author of How to Menopause and host of the Tamsen show, a weekly podcast with your roadmap to midlife and beyond. We covered all. 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