Speaker 1: Well here we are welcome to the Big Podcast. It
is Thursday today, at the fourteenth day of May. You're
of our Lord twenty twenty six. My name is Tom Sullivan.
And it's all about China. I mean, that's I mean.
So they had their big they had their day one
of their big meeting in Beijing, and a lot of
it was ceremony, and they had a nice big dinner,
and they had a big welcome mean and they did
all that, and yet you would think that there would
be nothing but kind words, and there was a lot
of that to a point. But the big surprise out
of day one is that we're thinking, and our president
is thinking about We would like to pretend like we're
not asking it's China for any help with Iran, but
Iran is the focus of what we've got going, at
least from our president's desk, he's looking at that. But
from President she surprise, he's thinking Taiwan. He's like, yeah, well,
I'm not even gonna mention Iran. They're not even talking
about Iran. President she is talking about Taiwan, and that
is his obviously big focus. Now, the reason why he
could help us with Iran is he could make a
phone call probably and get Iran to shape up regarding
the straight of four moves, because China gets eighty to
ninety p sand of their oil and gas from Iran,
but they also have huge stockpiles. They have emergency reserves
that are in large quantities, so they're not worried about
running out of gas or oil anytime soon. So this
whole thing has turned out to be President Trump got
up and said, how we want to work together. Wonderful words.
Then President She got up and let me start with
his speech. It's a very short one. It's his translator obviously,
who basically laid the line down on. It's all about
Taiwan from the way they see it.
Speaker 2: President Trump and I, fully aware of the expectations of
our two nations and the international community, have had multiple
meetings and a phone calls and kept US relations generally stable.
We both believe that the China US relationship is the
most important bilateral relationship in the world. We must make
its work and never mess it up. Both China and
the United States stand to gain from cooperation and lose
from confrontation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was, you know, pretty diplomatic, But don't
mess it up. I didn't know there was a Chinese
word for messing her tough. But let's get a couple
of people in here who are looking at well, let's play. Also,
Donald Trump was asked again about what his goals are,
and this is what he had to say.
Speaker 3: So we discussed it. I mean, when you say support,
they're not fighting a war with us or anything. No,
he said, he's not going to give military equipment. That's
a big savement. He said that today. That's a big savement.
Said that strongly, but at the same time said, you know,
they buy a lot of their oil there and they'd
like to keep doing that.
Speaker 1: In other words, President Trump would like to get some
sort of dialogue with the president she about Iran, but
doesn't look like President She is going there. Rett Bear,
he's over there for Fox to keep track of what's
going on. And this is his reaction to how they won.
Speaker 4: Went thinks that is the message from the White House
is that President she put out and agreed that Iron
can't have a nuclear weapon, that the straighter from Moves
has to be open. That's the message that came out
from the White House. We don't have specifics yet of
a readoubt of the specifics on the by LAT hope
to get more on that. The conversation from the Chinese perspective,
what they put out to their state run agency was
what Marc has referenced, and that is that Taiwan is
the biggest issue for them and that if handled properly,
it would be great between the US and China. If
handled improperly, in their words, it could lead to conflict
and clashes. That was seen as a kind of a
veiled threat here reading between the lines from President she
But everything on the pomp and circumstance suggests that this
relationship is moving forward and they're having good meetings. We
hope to get some more granular details on Iran pretty soon.
Speaker 1: Okay, So they're dancing around what to be focused on.
And like I said, China is looking at Taiwan, We're
looking at Iran. But the other thing you've got, it's
crystal clear that's coming out of China is it's not America.
I don't know why the ugly American goes and thinks
that everybody should be just like us. China is radically
different system than we have here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you can see that here, you know, you
can see the Communist CCP has a lot of control
over folks. I did the thing about cameras on the streets.
There are thousands and thousands of cameras. If you watch
TV from any broadcast that's not here, when they talk
about something negative about China, it goes to bars and
says please stand by. You know, if you talk about
human rights or anything like that, it shuts off for
like thirty seconds. And I saw it three times before
I just came here for this live shot. So yes,
what's public is one thing, what's private is another. The
key thing about this summit is the private stuff. And
if President Trump can get some real deliverables leaving here
in vasion.
Speaker 1: So if there are deliverables, and they should have been
ironed out before this meeting even started today, that we
will find out tomorrow because again they're twelve hours ahead,
so that means they'll be working while we're sleeping here.
They'll be working overnight and tomorrow will find out how
things went in day two hr. Let's do a Brit
Hume also from you know, the Dean of Washington d
C Reporters was asked about this whole conference.
Speaker 5: Well, China's attitude towards Taiwan really has never changed, nor
has that of the United States. You know, we've been
had strategic ambiguity, as you correctly describe it, and as
Marco Rubio cited, but we really haven't been ambivalent about
it in the sense that we have supported the independence
of Taiwan at least practically, if not formally, and we have,
you know, considerable military assets in the region, at least
partly for the purpose of deterring China from any military
aggression toward Taiwan. So we don't recognize Taiwan as an
independent country, except in some ways we do, and that
is what strategic ambiguity is all about. Our policy hasn't changed,
China's hasn't either. The strength of Xjin Chang's words may
matter the thing to watch for. And now, I think
if there's any any change in the US position, either
articulated by the President or in any other way so far,
I don't think there has been. So things remain basically
where they have for quite a long time now.
Speaker 1: So this strategic ambiguity is our policy, a one China policy.
But Joe Biden, I think on at least two maybe
three occasions, said of course, we'll go defend Taiwan, and
everybody had a kitten and his people had to go
clean up Aisle nine over after him saying that. But
I think a lot of people in the US, the
Biden administration obviously, but I think President Trump would too,
is that if Taiwan is attacked, would we go defend them? Well,
reaction on how this is all going on, at least
from the Democrats. Chris Coons, who is a Democrat from Delaware,
weighed in on his observations.
Speaker 6: We're not seeing much in the first three days, well,
exactly other than Trump calling she a great, great best
friend while he's helping Aron rearm.
Speaker 7: Yes, and President she mentioned Taiwan in his readout.
Speaker 6: He didn't mention Taiwan. Yes, he rated President Trump about
how it would cause great problems if we didn't back
off our support for Taiwan, and President Trump did not respond.
Speaker 1: So brit Hume response.
Speaker 5: How we're dealing with Democrats these days, virtually every single
one of them, who look for every conceivable opportunity to
criticize President Trump and to contril and to treat his
endeavors whatever they may be, as likely failures or signs
of weakness or something. So I would brush that off
as a part as a statement, while still keeping a
close eye on the situation Taiwan. It's worth remembering, you know, yes,
we'd like Taiwan to buy a thing from us, but
we buy some very important technological products from them, chips included, absolutely,
and in the race to win to win primisey in
artificial intelligence, we need Taiwan as a friendly ally to
keep on supplying us with the chips we need until
at some point they can be made in the United States,
and we're some distance from that now.
Speaker 1: Many years at a minimum. So Wendy Cutler, she's the
head of the Asia Society Policy Institute. She's been dealing
with China for decades, so she's devoted her life to
policy regarding China. And this is what she said.
Speaker 8: Well, clearly, engagement between the leaders is critical to get
this relationship back on track and in some kind of
stabilized condition. And I was encouraged that the two sides
have kind of confirmed or at least talking about three
more visits this year or three more meetings between the leaders,
because I think that will lead to more stability. But
when it comes to stability in the relationship. While both
sides welcome that, I think they have different visions on
what this might mean. And what struck me coming out
of today's meeting were the comments by the side making
it clear that constructive engagement, particularly on the economic front,
is going to be contingent on developments in Taiwan. This
was very clearly stated by China.
Speaker 1: There's a breed.
Speaker 8: Upon language that leaders that US leaders have been using
for many, many years on Taiwan, and if they move
one word away from that statement, or they say something
that off the cuff, that can have you know, important
implications and be read by China to signal other things.
So you know, it's interesting. And Trump's read out today
in his tweet, you didn't even mention Taiwan. He focused
on the economic relationship, and he also focused on Iran,
and that she read out had nothing mentioned totally silent
on Iran, and that's not surprising. But hopefully we'll learn
more tomorrow when these are over, how all of these
issues were traded and what the outcomes are. And here
I would also say a lot of nice words so far,
but not really a lot of concrete outcomes. As a
former trade negotiator, I would just mention I welcome the
fact that finally China is going to welcome back US
beef to China. This issue has been on the docket
for way too long, and I think that is one
tangible outcome we saw today.
Speaker 1: Well, not to criticize, but it does seem if you're
going into a business meeting and one side their goal
is A and the other side goal is B, it
doesn't make for an opportunity to find a lot of
common ground because you're starting off on completely different subjects.
So we'll see how tonight goes. We'll find out tomorrow.
Hr McMaster, former National security advisor for President Trump one
point zero. Here's what he said, gil.
Speaker 9: I think the kind of help that China wants to
provide is any help that will keep the Irani regime
on life support, because I think China knows Hi Jianping
knows that his influence in the Middle East goes to
zero if there's a change in the nature of that
regime such that it ceases its permanent hostility to the
United States. You know, the Great Satan Israel and its
Arab neighbors. Because what China got is influenced in the
Elisee from was presenting itself as the big restrainer of Iran.
That's how it got influenced with the Gulf States. Well, hey,
Iran now has attacked fourteen different nations in the region,
and China knows that Irani regime goes away, it's influenced
in the Middle East, goes to zero.
Speaker 1: Okay, But so far in day one, everybody has kind
of had their hair blown back by President she coming
out very strongly warning about Taiwan. Pretty aggressive of back
to hr you know, they are a bit more aggressive,
But what's really been aggressive are their actions against Taiwan
as well. They've really ramped up, you know, these sort
of incursions around Taiwan almost to desensitize Taiwan to what
might come later, you know, which is even more aggressive
military action in the form of a quarantine or a
blockade or or something like that. And when they say
they want they want the United States, you know, to
have kind of a good atmosphere around Taiwan, what they
really want us to do is kind of throw the Taiwan.
He's under the bus, mainly with the suspension of arms sales,
which I don't think President Trump's going to do, so
I think, you know, the way forward here is just quiet,
you know, sort of support for you know, for a
peaceful resolution, which means that China doesn't get to coerce
Taiwan into annexation by invitation, which is really what they
want to do. They want to pull what they did
in Hong Kong right through through subversion, and of course
the Taiwan These people know, because they've learned vicariously through
the fate of Hong Kong, that what that really amounts
to is the extinguishment of human freedom and an extension
of the Orwellian technologically enabled police state that you've been
reporting on on mainland China into Taiwan. A police state.
It truly is. Everything looks so nice, isn't it. They
have these nice ceremonies and the president's smiling and President
she is smiling, and they have big dinners. But I've
only been to China once and it was a big
eye opener about how the police state there is so
strong you don't want to step outline if you're in China,
they're very big, uncontrolled, and that's what they did with
Hong Kong, perfectly western country that has been gobbled up
by the police state of Beijing. Finally, let's get yunis
Yun in here she gives us kind of an overview
of what is happening on this meeting in Beijing.
Speaker 7: Well, Presidents Trump and She are just wrapping up a
state dinner, and at the opening of that dinner, President
Trump had delivered some remarks where he invited President She
to the White House on September twenty four. That's not
clear at this point whether or not the Chinese president
will accept, But earlier in the day, the two had
an expanded bilateral meeting at the Great Hall of the People,
and the preliminaries were very positive. People were talking about
building up the stability in the relationship as well as
avoiding conflict. Of The Chinese readout described this as a
new vision of stability, of strategic stability. But the big
news out of that meeting was the surprisingly strong and
very stern statement by President She about the issue that's
very important to him, and that is Taiwan. He said,
if handled badly, the two countries risk collision or conflict,
pushing the whole relationship into a very dangerous situation. Taiwan
independence is incompatible with the peace in the Taiwan Strait
like fire is to water, and I think that that
just goes to underscore the fragility of this relationship. What
was also interesting is what we haven't yet learned, and
that is the discussions on Iran. Before President Trump's trip,
a senior administration official had indicated that President Trump would
very likely raise the issue of China's support for Iran
at this meeting. What we've had so far is from
a White House official which says that the two sides
agreed that the Strait of Horrormuz must remain open to
support the free flow of energy, and also that President
She made clear China's opposition to the militarization of the
strait and any effort to charge a toll for its use.
Those comments, though, pretty much what we already know about
the Chinese, so we don't know whether or not the
Chinese are going to end their support for Iran.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 7: Another thing that we're waiting for is any information on
economic and trade deals. Again, that White House officials said
that President She had expressed interest in purchasing more American
oil to reduce China's dependence on the street on the
street in the future. The indication from the Chinese side
is that the readout cited President Xi jinpinga saying that
the economic and trade teams in South Korea, of course
Scott Vessant as well as the Chinese counterpart struck overall
balanced and positive income. So the two sides are going
to meet again for another biliteral meeting on Friday.
Speaker 1: So again we're getting kind of two different versions of
the same event because the White House is saying that
President she clearly stated that he is for the opening
of the Strait of Hormuz and that Iran cannot have
a nuclear weapon. That's from the White House, but there's
no mention, almost no mention a little bit, but not
much of anything from China talking about opening of the
Strait of Hormuz and Iran's nuclear weapons. So it's it
depends upon who's writing the press release or the propaganda,
whichever way you want to look at it. And speaking
of propaganda, there's another story that kind of came around
within the last week. It has to do with a
woman who is the mayor of the city of Arcadia
in southern California, and they talked about how they never
used the word spy, but they would. Apparently they thought
that she was acting as an agent, not a spy,
but an agent. Well, if you're not familiar with Arcadia,
it is a modern version of Chinatown. It is an
ethnic neighborhood. It is where Chinese immigrants go to live.
It is heavy Chinese. Everything about it is Chinese. So
to me, it looked like any ethnic neighborhood that you'll
find in Queens that they are still not beholden to,
but they love their motherland, and so the people in Arcadia.
The fact that this lady was sending out all this
information that sounded like it was coming from Beijing, she
probably was, because I think she represents a lot of
the people that live in Arcadia that are just die
hard Chinese people, but they wanted to come here because
of the police state in China. So I don't look
at her as a spy. She's resigned, she stepped down.
Did she act as a formal agent, maybe, But I
think it has a lot more to do with the
fact that they missed their they missed their homeland. So
we've got when we talked about it wrong. We talked
about oil and gas and the gas prices of the
average across the entry for the cheap stuff four dollars
fifty three cents. That is up two cents from yesterday,
but it's two cents lower than a week ago. Week ago,
we had a peak of four to fifty five. We're
at four fifty three today, so it's kind of bouncing
around in here around that level. Diesel also same kind
of thing, diesel five dollars sixty seven. That's up two
cents from yesterday, but it's about the same as it
was one week ago. So oil and gas is kind
of floating in the same area for now. But again,
all the oil analysts are saying, if this straight stays
closed much longer, these prices are going to continue to
keep going higher, so stand by for all of that.
Jobs came out first on Thursday morning, the first time
jobless claims two hundred eleven thousand, which is up a
little from last week, but it's about where it's been
for really a year or so longer than a year.
Continuing claims a million, seven eighty two. Both of those
are within the range of normal retail sales. They're the
little little tweak on the retail sales numbers. Retail sales
were up a half a percent in the month of April,
and that's pretty solid when you look at the headline.
But when you dig into the numbers, you find out
that retail sales of cars down, furniture down, clothing down.
Where you find retail sales increasing was gasoline, and the
number computes to a gain of two point eight percent.
That's a big gain. Well, you know that gas prices
have come way up, but what it doesn't say they're not.
People aren't buying more gas, they're just paying more. So
the retails that the cash register rings up is up
because the prices are up, So retail sales kind of
look stronger than it really is. Import prices, these are
the things in April coming in from around the world,
up four point two percent, so we're buying foreign goods.
The prices are up four point two percent. That is
double what was estimated, and it's also showing more signs
of inflation. Export prices, what we are able to sell
to foreigners, to other countries, they were up double what
was expected. They were up eight point eight percent. A
lot of that goes again to fuel that we are exporting.
So it's no surprise, I guess in some of those numbers.
You want to talk about Alex Murdau, the guy who
murdered his wife and son. The attorney in South Carolina,
this was a big shocker yesterday. I told you I'm
I'm going to give you the information because I know
a lot of you are really interested in this and
I don't know why. But here's the prosecutor on this
case saying, even though the Supreme Court in the state
of South Carolina threw out his murder convictions, they're still
going to go after him. Here's the prosecutor.
Speaker 10: We obviously intend to retry this case because at the
end of the day, people need to be reminded that
two people were violently murdered back in June of twenty
twenty one, and our office is going to seek another
retrial because we believe that we have credible evidence and
supports our conclusions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the prosecutor is not backing off the defense.
Attorney for mister Murdogg says, oh, yeah, we've got a
good defense going.
Speaker 11: I can tell you he is very relieved that he
has gotten the label of convicted murderer of his wife
and son all of him, and we plan to keep
it off of him. Most people that I talk to
don't believe he did it. His family doesn't believe he
did it, and they don't believe he could have done it.
The evidence, frankly doesn't support that he did it. Do
we have an alternative suspect? No, we wish we did,
but we have a multiple alternative theories.
Speaker 1: Kind of had to smirk when I heard about that.
We have multiple alternative theories. So did O. J. Simpson.
He's been well until he passed away. He was out
looking for the alternative murderer out on the golf courses.
So with that, let's wrap up today and we'll again
wait for tonight our time. Well, they'll have their second
day meeting and that's where the rubber hits the road.
I think more tonight, and we'll find out tomorrow morning
and we'll talk about it tomorrow on this podcast. So
thank you for doing all of China with me, mostly
all China. Wall Street today did not seem two phased
by everything going on over in Beijing. The market not
only up three hundred, the Dow up three hundred and seventy,
but once again we're back over fifty thousand, the Dow
at fifty thousand and sixty three, the SMP up fifty seven,
the NASDAC up two hundred and thirty two. The price
of gold fell fifty four dollars, down to four thousand
and six point fifty two. In the price of oil,
it went up a little more than one dollar. West
Texas Intermediate now one hundred and two dollars for a
barrel of oil. So that's it for today. Thank you
for coming by. We will be back again tomorrow and
I hope to see you there.