← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
Nation States: How China Impacts Your Job, Family & Future
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Welcome to Nation States with Yates Episode 3 this is the home where you can come to talk about what's happening in the wild and woolly world, but in common sense terms that make sense to your family and your community. As we like to put it, the world comes at you fast, whether you're sitting in the White House or at your house. You've heard the talking points, you've seen the headlines. We look to break things down in ways that are digestible for you and hopefully make these developments understandable and accessible to you in your everyday life. We aim to serve as your personal national security Advisor, just as we would if you were the President of the United States. But we see you as the president of your household, your livelihood, and hopefully we are a useful resource for you to come to often to break down what's happening in the world and in the news, but in ways that are useful to your everyday world. So the biggest news of recent times was President Trump's visit to China, talking with the leader of China, Xi Jinping, about things US China, but not limited to that. Also touched on the topics of both of our first two episodes, things on the China policy horizon, but also the the Iran situation in the Straits of Hormuz. We're going to dive a little bit deeper into what was transacted in the summit and how you should make some sense of it. And we'll talk a little bit about what we think were some of the wins and some of the watch out for is going forward in the US China relationship. This is the first of several times the president will meet with Xi Jinping, the leader of China in 2026. The President extended an invitation for China's leader Xi to come in September of this year. So we're going to have a follow on measuring point for the business of these meetings. In our first episode we noted the president met with Xi Jinping on the margins of APEC last fall. So there was sort of an agenda agreed to at that time on dealing with fentanyl, dealing with trade issues and maybe some of the geopolitical issues of the time. This was I think a maintenance summit looking at where are we? Not a big breakthrough summit, but let you into the meat of the conversation to judge for yourself what you thought of the talk of the summit and where we go from here as the greatest nation on earth dealing with one of the largest challenges to our way of life in China. So with that, we're going to take a quick break and then join me in the deep dive meaty part of our conversation on President Trump's engagement with Xi Jinping in China.
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This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal Travel Smarter, Not Harder and America's Best Value Inn by Sonesta. With convenient locations from coast to coast and value packed comfort at every turn, it's a practical choice for road trips, quick getaways and everyday travel that keeps things simple without sacrificing comfort. And when you're a Sonesta Travel Pass member, staying at America's Best Value Inn means earning points towards free nights, upgrades and more every time you stay. Go to Sonesta.com to book your stay and unlock the best rates with Sonesta Travel Pass here today, Rome tomorrow. Join now@sinesta.com Terms and conditions apply.
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This is Tamara Judge from Two T's in a Pod with Teddy Mellencamp and Tamara Judge. Can we take a moment to talk about Chewy? I get everything for rugby from Chewy. His food, the treats I'm constantly reordering, the toys he destroys in minutes, even his supplements, and it always shows up fast. Chewy also handles the serious stuff, prescriptions, pet insurance, telehealth, vet visits, and they're even rolling out vet clinics across the country. Their 247 customer service actually understands dog moms like me and cat moms, bird moms, reptile moms, all of us. And with Chewy's one year satisfaction guarantee, trying something new is never stressful for life. With pets, the answer is chewy. Save $20 on your first order with free shipping at chewpanions.chewy.com teapot welcome back
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to Nation States with Yates, episode three. We're going to pick up on where we were in episodes one and two where we talked a little bit about China and Iran took a bit of a dive into the summit that President Trump was having with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Well, now the summit has happened and both of those things merged into the same airspace, so to speak, in that a lot of what the president covered addressed the situation in Iran, talking with China. And then there were a few other outtakes from the summit that I think we really should give a little bit of treatment to to put into perspective. So first things first, thank you very much for joining the conversation. Please continue to join us by liking subscribing and sharing your love of nation states with Yates with your family and friends. And come back here to get a sense for where we're talking about the world as it hits the White House, but really in common sense terms, where it comes to your house. So how did this summit affect your household? Well, there are a few things that were announced in the commercial engagements over the course of the summit that might have caught your eye if you have a livelihood that touches on the aerospace industry at all. China's leader promised to buy 200 Boeing aircraft to add to China's commercial arsenal. That's more than a few jobs for those that are in the manufacturing and sales part of the Boeing empire. Maybe it hits your household in those proximate geographies. But also one other important takeaway from the summit was President Trump invited Xi Jinping to come to the United States later this year. He suggested a time in September that would be around when the UN General assembly meetings gather in New York City. And that is probably when the Chinese leader will come. But if not, then the United States is also hosting a G20 gathering in Miami, and that might be another interesting time for the leader of China to come. Needless to say, there will be more Boeing aircraft on the menu for that conversation, too. So maybe 200 is not the final answer from the Chinese for how much they might buy from that interesting industry in the United States. And maybe we'll get a few more as the year progresses. And President Trump continues his conversation with, as he calls it, his good friend Xi Jinping, as you may know, in my background, I don't really like Xi Jinping as a friend. But if the President can make friends with him and sell some American products, I don't give any problem or show any shade in that regard. But beyond aircraft, the President was also talking about agricultural products. Now, this is an area where our friends at the Heritage foundation and their backgrounder suggested these are the relatively safe areas or favorable outcomes that we were to look for in this summit. And the leader of China did make another commitment to buy more U.S. agricultural products that included soybeans and beef, but not limited just to those kinds of goods. And the U.S. department of Agriculture put out presser highlighting a few other areas where there might be some growth and progress in selling America, of course, we love the heartland. We love our farmers. It's a great American way of life. And America is one of those few generous countries in the world that makes more than we could ever consume. And by being great at agriculture, we're actually feeding the world, too. So why not have some more Chinese customers for our food products? That doesn't impinge upon American national security. They're not really taking our technology or driving us out of the market. They're buying. So another win for America in that category. There is also a mention in the President's conversations about China's purchases from the United States that as they talked about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz and the problems that are being experienced there, that China, too could buy more from America. Now, it's an interesting change because in many of the conversations about China in recent years, we've noted some overdependencies, maybe in pharmaceuticals and in some of our processing of rare earths and minerals. But processing of products generally has been a Chinese near monopoly in recent years. So having the Chinese come to maybe the great state of Texas or Louisiana to fill some of their oil and natural gas needs, maybe transit that Panama Canal where America and our ally in Panama have said, you know, maybe China, you don't control all of it, but we're going to have fair use of that canal. Maybe moving some big beautiful oil and natural gas from American sources would be a good start and down payment on that activity. But also, the great huge state of Alaska has some reserves that we would love our Asian allies to buy more of, and they're looking at it. But if China wants to buy some of that great Alaskan product, why not have customers in line buying? America, making us the world's gas station is not the worst position in the world to be especially getting away from choke points like the Straits of Hormuz and the Straits of Malacca in Southeast Asia. So the President made some headway in selling America and repositioning America as a central player in some of these energy and food commodity markets. That I think is a net win. We thought going into the summit would be largely maintenance mode, not really looking for big breakthroughs. Presidential teams often will look for breakthroughs and deliverables, as they're called in the business. But in this case, I think this deliverables list was appropriate and I think humble, but not wrong. Directionally the right way to go and certainly room to grow. As the President continues the conversation with China, there is this issue of artificial intelligence. And where is the United States standing in the competition with China? And it is a competition. This is an area where some advocates would say, well, we want China to be a part of our ecosystem. Well, the fact of the matter is the Chinese don't really want to be a part of our ecosystem. They would love to be the nexus through which everyone else needs to go. That's what they've been doing with building their own brands. It's what they've been doing with carving out their own information ecosystem as they see it being free from American interference and control. But what it really means is they're looking to compete with us. And the artificial intelligence race is just as central to our future as a space race is. And right in the middle of all of that is chips. So what are chips? We're not talking about potato chips, that fantastic snack that of course the Chinese should buy a ton of from America, but they snack on other foods. For the most part, we're talking about those silicon chips and the, the things that make our smart world go round. Now, at the center of the universe, on the most advanced ships, is the small nation state of Taiwan. Now we are the nation states of Yates. And the Chinese like to talk about Taiwan not being a nation or a state, but being a part of their territory. That's a to be determined prospect if you look at an honest read of history, geography and governance in the world. But the President went headstrong into that. So we're in the AI competition, we're in the chip competition. And we've got this Taiwan issue that have come up in the course of the summit and the Taiwan portion. We're going to do a dedicated next follow on episode on Taiwan on nation states with Yates. But for now, we're going to get back at this AI race and chips. There's some big time CEOs that went along with the President to China, one of which was Jensen Huang of Nvidia. Nvidia is right in the center of the conversation of Taiwan and chips. And what level of technology should we sell into the Chinese market where we're making reasonable commercial gains, where they can be had, but also not crossing any national security lines. We definitely don't want to be feeding a competitor the best we have in in order to use that against us, which China has proven willing to do from time to time, whether it was the threat to withhold access to rare earths. And we kept that pause or truce in place so that the United States supply chains aren't compromised for now. But some Nvidia chips were announced to be okay for sale to the Chinese market. My understanding is that those were things that have been talked about for some time. And while someone like me might not be inclined to sell those kinds of chips into China, others in the tech industry, in the White House and otherwise have green lighted this move into. I think it's something called the H200 chip that is not the best of the best, but it's an improvement upon what had been greenlighted to go into the Chinese market to date. So there's a down payment now, whether China will buy those kind of chips or that they just wanted to have the bar raised a bit more, they seem to want to get our best because for now we have a computational gap lead on China in the AI race and we should aim to keep that. And so for now, I think that there was some forward movement on the tech competition space and also the tech sales space without overly compromising what I would have considered to be America's absolute red lines in that competition. But we're going to have to keep a watching brief on that because the pressure will be there to sell more and we have to make sure that a short term dollar doesn't come back to have a strategic, economic or national security consequence for America that costs much more than a summit is worth. So beyond that, we also had some of the formalities of summitry. We had the President going to the leadership compound called Zhongnanhai in Beijing. And that's a fancy way of basically talking about where the Communist Party's headquarters is. They have a central lake, a south lake and a central lake there. Inside the compound, there's a couple of strategically named parts of the park that the the leader of China was trying to show off for President Trump. He was walking through a literal forest inside there Not a thick one, but bragging about the age of trees and somehow making a point. You know, America's young China is old. Hopefully President Trump didn't take in too much of that, because I think that there are some interesting redwood forests in California that are older than those forests and that are in the leadership compound in Beijing. And American civilization is older than the United States as a republic. The foundations of our civilization and the wonderful endowment of resources that we have here in America, that's made America great. Go back. Older than our country, but we're celebrating 250 this time around this year. That's a heck of a lot longer than the People's Republic of China established in 1949. So there were a little bit of showmanship and mind games that were going back and forth. And of course, there was this kind of crazy mention of the Thucydides trap that is a reference to the Peloponnesian Wars. Great of the Chinese to recognize that American classical civilization is based on thousands of years of Greco Roman civilization, some British common law heritage and some of the principles of our founding. But you go back to this notion of the Peloponnesian wars, you have a rising power and a declining empire, and is conflict inevitable? It seemed like the Chinese wanted to take a little bit of a gratuitous jab at the United States as being somewhat of a dying empire. Well, number one, we're not an empire. Number two, we're not dying. We're making it great again. And some of what's been done around the world before this summit should have been a sobriety checkpoint for any Chinese hubris in that regard. We don't want to be flippant or irresponsible. We don't really want a war with China. But they're the ones that seem to be wanting to bring challenges and conflicts, from territorial claims to things that would threaten our vital supply chains coming out of Taiwan, our treaty ally in Japan that's doing a great job of improving its independent capabilities. And a bit of a rejuvenation there under Prime Minister Takaichi. That's a good news story. China tends to see that as a negative of some kind of competition brewing on its near abroad. Tries to keep Japan prisoner to World War II history. But China doesn't want us to keep them prisoner to their Cultural Revolution. Dark days or the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, or even the Wuhan flu that went out, infected the world and they lied about it, killed millions of people around the world, including Americans, took trillions of dollars out of the economy. They don't want us to dwell on those things of the past, but they want to dredge up the Peloponnesian wars and a false narrative about a Thucydides trap being relevant to the US And China today. But you may have seen or heard some of those things in the headlines. And we wanted to take you beyond the headlines to a little bit of a deeper truth that in reality, I think President Trump was largely successful in engaging an intransigent partner in China. It is the greatest challenge to the American way of life in 2026, going into the years in our near future. I think he was level setting where the relationship ought to be, focusing on landing in a more fair, balanced, reciprocal relationship where China should open up more to the companies that he brought with him. But he didn't really give ground on military affairs or other things during the course of the summit. That is the good news. Maybe we'll sell a little bit more, but really geopolitically, I also don't know that we advanced that far. The president asked for a conversation about Iran, made clear where America was, said we didn't need China's help. It's a good thing we don't need China's help because we're not going to get it. And I think that is getting played out in real time now. And one of the follow on items from the summit is going to be the president having a return to business that we talked about in episode two about Iran. We're going to need to get back to opening up the Straits of Hormuz, getting that beautiful energy flowing to the other parts of the world and showing the Iranians that we're not going to wait for them to dither around on negotiating by way of Pakistan on one page documents we need to start establishing some principles of freedom of navigation, being a public good, getting allies on board and using their power to be a part of that, and never ever allowing anyone to make a choke point, a toll plaza, for their selfish purposes. America's going to have to knock down that toll plaza. And that is a signal to China coming out of punctuating the outtake from this summit. There are other straits that China is going to be vulnerable to and we're not going to allow them to command or put up a toll or a blockade. That includes the Straits of Malacca, but also the Taiwan Strait, on whom though half of the world's global shipping traffic is affected by any Chinese move relevant to Taiwan. It's not just chips, it's all those goods that China depends on moving to the big American consumer market that would get affected by any kind of irresponsible activity. So when the President says cool it, he might be on the surface saying it to Taiwan, but Taiwan hasn't been doing anything wrong. He's really just using it as an opportunity to tell China to cool it. And if they do, there's a golden opportunity to level set this relationship for at least the near term in the President's estimation. I wish him well in that I see China through a lens clouded darkly because of the damage it's done to American interests and to American families by way of fentanyl, unfair trade Covid and just general irresponsible behavior if they want to behave responsibly. Americans are a forgiving and generous people and I'm grateful for that. With that, we're going to take a little bit of a break and come back with our parting thoughts, thoughts and tease for our next episode.
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Travel Smarter, Not Harder and America's Best Value Inn by Sinesta with convenient locations from coast to coast and value packed comfort at every turn, it's a practical choice for road trips, quick getaways and everyday travel that keeps things simple without sacrificing comfort. And when you're a Sonesta Travel Pass member, staying at America's Best Value Inn means earning points towards free nights, upgrades and more every time you stay. Go to Sonesta.com to book your stay and unlock the best rates with Sonesta Travel Pass here today, Rome tomorrow. Join now@sonesta.com Terms and conditions apply.
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This is Tamara Judge from Two T's in a Pod with Teddy Mellencamp and Tamara Judge. Can we take a moment to talk about Chewy? I get everything for rugby from Chewy. His food, the treats I'm constantly reordering, the toys he destroys in minutes, even his supplements, and it always shows up fast. Chewy also handles the serious stuff, prescriptions, pet insurance, telehealth, vet visits, and they're even rolling out vet clinics across the country. Their 247 customer service actually understands dog moms like me and cat moms, bird moms, reptile moms, all of us. And with Chewy's one year satisfaction guarantee, trying something new is never stressful for life. With pets, the answer is chewy. Save $20 on your first order with free shipping at chewpanions chewy.com teapot welcome
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back to Nation States with Yates. Thank you for joining us this episode to take a little bit of a deep Dive into what happened with President Trump's trip to China and his engagement with Xi Jinping, the leader of China. A lot of topics were covered that were what they would call bilateral between the US And China. But there were a lot of other topics that hit other parts of the world, most notably the situation in the Straits of Hormuz and the remnants of the Iranian regime holding on there. Whether China will weigh in with its relationship and influence to get the Iranians to make a deal, still to be determined. So that's an outstanding part of the summit where it's going to require some follow up. There were some other issues floated, ranging from buying agricultural products, but also whether China should buy agricultural land and how many students should China bring into the United States that take up spots in our universities that might even open up some national security questions about whether the students are engaged in academic discourse and learning about America, or whether they're engaged in long term research or overstaying their visa and doing things that are not really what the bargain was to begin with. The president is indicated a bit more of an open mind about some of those things, and I think that's an issue that might be worthy of more consideration. But when you think about what came out of this summit, that matters most to your family. What do you think about your kids going off to school and competing for tuition space, fellowship space, and basically a letter of admission for a university? If you've got a bunch of Chinese foreign exchange students coming at full freight, taking up some of the slots in these universities, I think that's a really serious Main Street America issue. Doesn't have anything to do with what their ethnicity is. We have plenty of ethnically Chinese American citizens that are applying for some of these positions in universities too, that would have to compete with those from Communist China to get a spot in these universities. There's a whole host of follow up issues with regard to our relationship with Taiwan and our allies. We're pushing them to invest in their defense capabilities, to have better independent capabilities, maybe be a little less reliant on the United States, but still be good, reliable partners of the US And a lot of them are on board with moving in that direction. But where are we ready to move ahead in that? We. Well, coming up in our next episode, I want to take in particular a deep dive on Taiwan because I think especially after this summit, it's worthy to share a little bit of background on that island nation. And whether we even call it an island nation is disputed by some. But hopefully you will enjoy a little bit of what my personal experience has been for four decades in coming and going to Taiwan and in and out of government and policy and other areas. Certainly the President and the leader of China made Taiwan central to the discourse. But why and how and what do you think a reasonable approach is to that part of the world? What level of risk should the United States take in providing self defense for Taiwan? And how should the United States approach balancing risk with regard to that relationship and the reward that relationship brings to everyday Americans? Well, that's going to be what we take up in episode number four. So I invite you to please join us in that conversation. But as always, I thank you for joining us at Nation States with Yates. Please, like subscribe and do all the right things. Download the iHeartRadio app and join us every episode for these conversations on what's happening in the world of politics and national security. But how it hits you on Main street with that. I'm Steve Yates, your host here at Nation States with Yates. Till next time. Thanks very much for being with us.
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This is Andrea Gunning from Betrayal. Find home wherever you roam at Sinesta Es and Simply Suites, where longer stays feel comfortable, flexible and easy. Stretch out and enjoy spacious accommodations and homelike amenities designed to help you settle in and stay productive or relaxed for however long you need. And when you're a Sonesta Travel Pass member, staying at Sinesta Es and Simply Suites means earning points towards free nights, upgrades and more with every eligible stay. Go to Sonesta.com to book your stay and unlock the best rates with Sonessa Travel Pass here today, Rome tomorrow. Join now@sonesta.com Terms and conditions apply.
- [29:04]
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This is Tamara Judge from Two T's in a Pod with Teddy Mellencamp and Tamara Judge. Can we take a moment to talk about Chewy? I get everything for rugby from Chewy. His food, the treats I'm constantly reordering, the toys he destroys in minutes, even his supplements, and it always shows up fast. Chewy also handles the serious stuff, prescriptions, pet insurance, telehealth, vet visits, and they're even rolling out vet clinics across the country. Their 247 customer service actually understands dog moms like me and cat moms, bird moms, reptile moms, all of us. And with Chewy's one year satisfaction guarantee, trying something new is never stressful for life. With pets, the answer is chewy. Save $20 on your first order with free shipping at chewpanions.chewy.com teapot.