Stakes of Trump's China Trip, Inflation Report Shows War Impact, Hantavirus Science

Summary

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Up First from NPR – May 12, 2026

Episode Theme:
Today's episode covers three major stories: President Trump’s high-stakes visit to China amidst global tensions, a new inflation report highlighting the economic fallout from the ongoing war with Iran, and what you need to know about the cruise ship-based hantavirus outbreak. Each news segment brings expert analysis, insightful quotes, and the latest updates.

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1. President Trump’s State Visit to China

Key Discussion Points:

• President Trump is departing for Beijing for a closely watched state visit with President Xi Jinping.
• Trade relations and the ongoing war in Iran are prominent topics for discussion.
• The visit will be characterized by ceremonial splendor but is expected to be competitive beneath the surface.

Notable Quotes & Insights:

• On Atmosphere and Objectives:
  • “China is known for putting on a spectacular show for visiting leaders, which is something Trump clearly wants and is likely to get.”
    —Tamara Keith, NPR Senior Political Correspondent [03:06]
  • “That's going to be a wild one. I said, but we have to put on the biggest display you've ever had in the history of China.”
    —President Donald Trump [03:07]
• On Trade Deals:
  • “Observers expect China to announce purchases of additional soybeans and other farm products and maybe even Boeing airplanes. Announcing big purchase agreements is a trademark of Trump foreign trips. But these things have often turned out to be less than meets the eye.”
    —Tamara Keith [03:47]
• On the Uncertainty of Deliverables:
  • “Everything is still in flux at this point. Normally, at least, the economic deliverables would be nailed in. That is not the case. So this is going to be evolving up until the last minute.”
    —Melanie Hart, Atlantic Council [04:26]
• On Geopolitical Dynamics:
  • “This summit will look polite on the surface, but tactically, it's going to be a rugby match with both sides grappling for advantage.”
    —Melanie Hart (paraphrased by Tamara Keith) [04:37]
• On Divergent Agendas:
  • “Both sides want to stabilize the relationship… but they have very different goals.”
    —Tamara Keith [04:51]
  • “The world's greatest power, the world's greatest emerging power inevitably are in conflict, and particularly because the value systems are so different.”
    —Dennis Wilder, Georgetown University [05:11]
• On Human Rights and Taiwan:
  • “While other presidents scolded Xi about human rights and warned him to leave Taiwan alone, Trump has at least publicly been more focused on deals and admiration for the power that President Xi wields within China.”
    —Tamara Keith [05:21]
• Potential for Continued Diplomacy:
  • “It's worth noting this is just the first of what could be four meetings between the leaders this year, depending on how this one goes.”
    —Tamara Keith [05:38]

Important Segment:

• [02:13–05:45] – In-depth discussion of the stakes, expectations, and diplomatic maneuvering around Trump’s China trip.

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2. Inflation Report: Impact of the War in Iran

Key Discussion Points:

• New inflation data shows the significant effect of the war in Iran, especially due to the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.
• Gasoline prices have surged, contributing heavily to consumer price inflation.
• Energy price increases are also affecting travel (airline tickets, baggage fees) and may eventually drive up prices for other goods.

Notable Quotes & Insights:

• On Rising Energy Prices:
  • “AAA says the average price for regular gas today is $4.50 a gallon. That's up more than a buck and a half since the war began. And that's expected to be a significant driver of inflation in April, just as it was in March.”
    —Scott Horsley, NPR Economic Correspondent [06:13]
• On Ripple Effects:
  • “Airlines are having to pay a lot more for jet fuel, and they are beginning to pass that cost on to customers. That's forcing some business travelers to rethink their travel plans.”
    —Scott Horsley [06:44]
  • “Ultimately, the high cost of diesel fuel could affect the price of everything that gets delivered by truck or train.”
    —Scott Horsley [07:04]
  • “We don't anticipate seeing that unless we really really had a prolonged period of high energy prices.”
    —Josh Hurt, Senior Economist at Vanguard [07:27]
• On Housing Costs:
  • “Today's report is also expected to show an uptick in housing costs… some of that April increase in housing cost is a statistical quirk that stems from the government shutdown last fall.”
    —Scott Horsley [07:55]
  • “We would look at that largely as catch up for the underreporting… We would expect it to start to revert back and normalize next month.”
    —Josh Hurt [08:22]
• On Federal Reserve Options:
  • “There's not a whole lot they can do to address this energy supply shock… The Fed typically fights inflation by raising interest rates. But that's not going to free up tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz or boost the supply of jet fuel.”
    —Scott Horsley [08:42]
  • “By the way, that jobs report also showed that average wages in April were up 3.6% from a year ago. If today's cost of living report comes in as expected, that means all of those wage gains over the last year have been gobbled up by higher prices.”
    —Scott Horsley [09:32]

Memorable Moment:

• Amy Martinez’s quip on gas prices: “Welcome to living in California. Gas prices are always high here.” [07:48]

Important Segment:

• [05:52–09:41] – Comprehensive look at the personal and systemic costs of inflation linked to geopolitical conflict.

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3. Hantavirus Outbreak: Science and Response

Key Discussion Points:

• The hantavirus outbreak, originating from a cruise ship, is serious but unlikely to become another COVID-level pandemic.
• Transmission is far less efficient than COVID; close contact is required, typically via rodent droppings or body fluids.
• There is no vaccine or specific treatment, and in known cases, the fatality rate is significant.

Notable Quotes & Insights:

• On Contagiousness:
  • “The biggest reason is hantavirus does not spread from one person to another that easily… you need to be in quite close contact. So think of a household or a nurse caring for a patient.”
    —Gabriela Emanuel, NPR Science Correspondent [10:11]
  • “If there are no precautions taken, then one person will spread it to two other people on average. Compare that with COVID where the number has changed over time, but it has risen above 10 people. And for measles, 15 other people get it from one case on average.”
    —Scott Weaver, University of Texas Medical Branch (via Gabriela Emanuel) [11:00]
  • “This is pretty close to the lower end of infectiousness…”
    —Josh Hurt [11:12]
• On Control Measures and Timeline:
  • “Measures like monitoring, masking, hand washing. And another distinction from COVID: the time between being exposed to the virus and becoming contagious and sick is long, often multiple weeks.”
    —Gabriela Emanuel [11:21]
• On Severity:
  • “We have nine cases so far, three deaths, according to the World Health Organization. Authorities say in general, between 30 and 40% of patients die.”
    —Gabriela Emanuel [11:46]
• On Research Funding:
  • “Dr. Weaver actually had a grant from the federal government to study hantavirus, and the grant was terminated last May by the Trump administration. That worries Weaver. He says more investment, not less, is needed.”
    —Gabriela Emanuel [13:00]
• On Mutations:
  • “Researchers found that the genetic makeup of that virus was almost exactly the same as in an outbreak two decades earlier, meaning this hantavirus does not seem to mutate quickly.”
    —Gabriela Emanuel [13:20]

Important Segment:

• [09:51–13:55] – Detailed science-driven breakdown of the hantavirus outbreak, risk assessment, and public health response.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “It’s going to be a rugby match with both sides grappling for advantage.” – Tamara Keith (channeling Melanie Hart) [04:37]
• “Welcome to living in California. Gas prices are always high here.” – Amy Martinez [07:48]

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Useful Timestamps

• [02:13–05:45]: Trump’s China trip—background, goals, analysis.
• [05:52–09:41]: Inflation and economic impact of the Iran war.
• [09:51–13:55]: Understanding and contextualizing the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak.

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This summary provides a practical breakdown of the episode’s most pressing topics, expert commentary, and key moments in the speakers’ own language and tone. Perfect for listeners who missed the episode or want an efficient recap.

Transcript

[Michelle Martin]

President Trump is leaving for Beijing today for a state visit with China's President Xi Jinping.

[Amy Martinez]

One analyst says it'll look polite on the surface, but it'll be a rugby match underneath. Trade is on the agenda. So is the war in Iran.

[Michelle Martin]

I'm Michelle Martin. That's a Martinez. And this is up first from NPR News. A new inflation report out this morning will show just how much the war in Iran is impacting consumers. The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz has driven gas prices up. Airline tickets are also climbing have waged.

[Amy Martinez]

And public health officials say the huntavirus outbreak that started on a cruise ship is not the next Covid, but there's still no vaccine and no specific treatment for it. We'll hear how the virus spreads. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.

[Joanna Strober]

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[Michelle Martin]

President Trump says he has a great relationship with China's President Xi Jinping. That relationship will be put to the test this week during Trump's visit to Beijing.

[President Donald Trump]

Look, I respect him a lot and hopefully he respects me.

[Amy Martinez]

That was Trump Monday in the Oval Office. The White House is keeping expectations for the trip. Tame trade is a major agenda item, but the war with Iran is also likely to get attention.

[Michelle Martin]

NPR senior political Correspondent Tamara Keith is on the line with us now. Before traveling to China on Air Force One. Good morning, Tam.

[Tamara Keith]

Good morning.

[Michelle Martin]

So what is Trump looking to get out of this trip?

[Tamara Keith]

Well, China is known for putting on a spectacular show for visiting leaders, which is something Trump clearly wants and is likely to get. There will be bilateral meetings, a tea, a grand banquet, and a no doubt spectacular welcome ceremony at the Great hall of the People. This is what Trump said about his expectations earlier this year.

[President Donald Trump]

That's going to be a wild one. I said, but we have to put on the biggest display you've ever had in the history of China. You know, last time I went to China, President Xi, he treated me so well.

[Tamara Keith]

Now, in terms of substance, that is less clear. The White House says Trump intends to deliver more good deals on behalf of the country to rebalance trade with China. They are expected to discuss the idea of a US China Board of Trade, which would represent a further cooling of what had been a very active and escalating trade war during Trump's first year back in office.

[Michelle Martin]

So what might be in those deals that the White House is talking about?

[Tamara Keith]

Observers expect China to announce purchases of additional soybeans and other farm products and maybe even Boeing airplanes. Announcing big purchase agreements is a trademark of Trump foreign trips. But these things have often turned turned out to be less than meets the eye. More than a dozen big name corporate executives are traveling as part of the US Delegation, including Apple's Tim Cook, Tesla's Elon Musk, and Kelly Ortberg, the CEO of Boeing. But Melanie Hart, the senior director of the global China hub at the Atlantic Council, says there are still meetings happening this week to lay the groundwork for Trump's trip.

[Joanna Strober]

Everything is still in flux at this point. Normally, at least, the economic deliverables would be nailed in. That is not the case. So this is going to be evolving up until the last minute.

[Tamara Keith]

She says this summit will look polite on the surface, but tactically, it's going to be a rugby match with both sides grappling for advantage.

[Michelle Martin]

That's, that is quite an image. But what are they grappling over?

[Tamara Keith]

What are they not grappling over? The experts I've spoken to say both sides want to stabilize the relationship. Otherwise this visit wouldn't have gone ahead in the shadow of the Iran war. But they have very different goals. Dennis Wilder is a professor at Georgetown University who was a top adviser on China to President George W. Bush.

[President Donald Trump]

The world's greatest power, the world's greatest emerging power inevitably are in conflict, and particularly because the value systems are so different.

[Tamara Keith]

While other presidents scolded Xi about human rights and warned him to leave Taiwan alone, Trump has at least publicly been more focused on deals and at admiration for the power that President Xi wields within China. It's worth noting this is just the first of what could be four meetings between the leaders this year, depending on how this one goes.

[Michelle Martin]

That's NPR's Tamara Keith Tam, thank you and safe travels.

[Tamara Keith]

You're welcome.

[Amy Martinez]

A new report on inflation this morning will show how much the war with Iran is affecting consumer prices.

[Michelle Martin]

Higher gasoline prices are the most visible fallout from the war in the us but that's not the only place where consumers are feeling the pain.

[Amy Martinez]

NPR's Scott Horsley is here. Scott, Energy prices are spiking because oil is not getting out of the Strait of Hormuz. So how is that affecting the overall cost of living?

[Scott Horsley]

Good morning. We've all seen the impact of the gas pump. AAA says the average price for regular gas today is $4.50 a gallon. That's up more than a buck and a half since the war began. And that's expected to be a significant driver of inflation in April, just as it was in March. Forecasters think the annual inflation rate last month climbed to 3.7, maybe 3.8%. If so, that would be the highest inflation we've seen in at least two and a half years.

[Amy Martinez]

So what kind of ripple effects are those high energy prices having?

[Scott Horsley]

One of the most obvious side effects so far is the jump in the cost of airline tickets and baggage fees. Airlines are having to pay a lot more for jet fuel, and they are beginning to pass that cost on to customers. That's forcing some business travelers to rethink their travel plans. It could also cut into some vacation travel, perhaps not right away, but as people make plans for later in the year. My colleague Stephen Bassaha spoke to a travel advisor who says reservations for fall travel are down and, you know, some people are opting to just stay closer to home. Ultimately, the high cost of diesel fuel could affect the price of everything that gets delivered by truck or train. But Josh Hurt, who's a senior economist at Vanguard, says that'll depend on how long this wartime price spike lasts to

[Josh Hurt]

really start bleeding through into, you know, more wide scale use in the economy. We don't anticipate seeing that unless we really really had a prolonged period of high energy prices.

[Scott Horsley]

Right now, the cost of diesel fuel is up nearly $2 a gallon since the war began. There's only so long businesses can Absorb those higher transportation costs before they start to show up in the price of other goods.

[Amy Martinez]

Welcome to living in California. Gas prices are always high here. So is the war the only factor pushing inflation higher?

[President Donald Trump]

No.

[Scott Horsley]

Today's report is also expected to show an uptick in housing costs, and that's important because housing is such a big component of the government's cost of living index. Some of that April increase in housing cost is. Some, though, is a statistical quirk that stems from the government shutdown last fall. You know, there was a gap in data for October, and so housing inflation looked artificially low for a while, Hertz says. By contrast, today's report is going to show housing inflation looks higher than usual.

[Josh Hurt]

We would look at that largely as catch up for the underreporting, you know, that we had in October. We would expect it to start to revert back and normalize next month.

[Scott Horsley]

So take that housing inflation figure today with a grain of salt.

[Capital One / BetterHelp Announcer]

All right?

[Amy Martinez]

Now, the Federal Reserve has been trying for years to bring down inflation. Now it's moving up again. So how worrisome is that?

[Scott Horsley]

Yeah, this is not exactly the welcome math that Kevin Warsh, President Trump's pick to be the new leader of the Fed, was hoping for. Unfortunately for Warsh and other Fed policymakers, there's not a whole lot they can do to address this energy supply shock, given their limited toolkit. The Fed typically fights inflation by raising interest rates, But. But that's not going to free up tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuhus or boost the supply of jet fuel. Of course, President Trump has been pushing the central bank to lower interest rates, and that's looking less likely. For now, we could see a rate cut if it looked as if the job market were falling apart. But the jobs report we got last week showed no sign of that. Employers added 115,000 jobs in April. So for the time being, it looks like the Fed is just going to keep interest rates where they are. By the way, that jobs report also showed that average wages in April were up 3.6% from a year ago. If today's cost of living report comes in as expected, that means all of those wage gains over the last year have been gobbled up by higher prices.

[Amy Martinez]

That's NPR's Scott Horsley. Scott, thanks a lot.

[Scott Horsley]

You're welcome.

[Amy Martinez]

The Hansa virus outbreak that started on a cruise ship is not the next Covid. Now, that's according to public health experts.

[Michelle Martin]

The risk to the public at large is extremely low, but this is a transmissible disease and of course, a worry to the ship's passengers.

[Amy Martinez]

NPR's Gabriela Emanuel joins us. So why are experts saying this is not the next Covid?

[Gabriela Emanuel]

The biggest reason is hantavirus does not spread from one person to another that easily. Now, people usually get it when they inhale virus particles from infected rodent, feces, urine, or saliva. But when it does spread from one person to the next, you need to be in quite close contact. So think of a household or a nurse caring for a patient. Although I should know, from one well documented outbreak in Argentina a few years back, we do know that it has the potential to spread in settings like a birthday party or a funeral. Scott Weaver of the University of Texas Medical Branch told me that if there are no precautions taken, then one person will spread it to two other people on average. Compare that with COVID where the number has changed over time, but it has risen above 10 people. And for measles, 15 other people get it from one case on average. So Weaver's confident this hantavirus outbreak can be contained.

[Josh Hurt]

This is pretty close to the lower

[President Donald Trump]

end of infectiousness, but it's high enough that we do have to take these kind of measures to prevent further spread.

[Gabriela Emanuel]

Measures like monitoring, masking, hand washing. And another distinction from COVID The time between being exposed to the virus and becoming contagious and sick is long, often multiple weeks. That can be annoying because you have to watch for symptoms, but it gives medical experts time to get a handle on the outbreak.

[Amy Martinez]

All right, so not the next Covid, but how serious is it for people who have it?

[Gabriela Emanuel]

It's serious. In this outbreak, we have nine cases so far, three deaths, according to the World Health Organization. Authorities say in general, between 30 and 40% of patients die. Basically what happens is their lungs fill up with fluid. However, that fatality rate is likely significantly lower because many mild cases go undetected. But it's still a big percentage, and there's no vaccine or specific treatment. And another thing that makes this virus serious is the early symptoms are very generic. Flu like symptoms like a fever or muscle aches, meaning it can be hard to know when you need to isolate and get medical attention.

[Amy Martinez]

What else do we know about how it spreads?

[Gabriela Emanuel]

Yeah, so it starts spreading right around the onset of symptoms and in very close contact. Yet scientists can't say definitively if it's droplets in the air or the virus lives on surfaces. What we do know is this hantavirus does not attack the upper respiratory tract or even respiratory cells as much as it attacks the blood vessels which impact the lungs in the lower respiratory tract. That's likely part of why it does not transmit as easily as, say, the common cold. But scientists still need to learn more. Dr. Weaver actually had a grant from the federal government to study hantavirus, and the grant was terminated last May by the Trump administration. That worries Weaver. He says more investment, not less, is needed.

[Amy Martinez]

You mentioned an outbreak in Argentina a few years ago. What was learned then?

[Gabriela Emanuel]

It happened in 2018, 2019, and one man spread the virus to 33 other people with 11 deaths total. So deadly but not huge. Researchers found that the genetic makeup of that virus was almost exactly the same as in an outbreak two decades earlier, meaning this hantavirus does not seem to mutate quickly. That's good news insofar as it's a known virus and with the right public health precautions, it shouldn't spread too far.

[Amy Martinez]

That's NPR's Gabriela Emanuel. Thank you very much.

[Gabriela Emanuel]

Thank you.

[Amy Martinez]

And that's a first for Tuesday, May

[Michelle Martin]

12, Amy Martinez, and I'm Michelle Martin. Today's episode of I Up first was edited by Rebecca Metzler, Rafael Naam, Giselle Grayson, Mohamed El Bardisi and Olivia Hampton. It was produced by Ziad Butch and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hyness. Our technical director is Carly Strange. And our supervising senior producer is Vince Pearson. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.

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