Big smiles, champagne, a 2½-hour bilateral sit-down — and one very deliberate non-answer on Taiwan. The summit produced headlines. Whether it produces deals is a different question entirely.

2.5h BILATERAL SIT-DOWN

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President Trump landed in Beijing this week with the U.S. tech industry in tow, a long list of things he wanted from China, and — crucially — one thing he refused to discuss at all. He’s flying home having sold the summit as a triumph. China, for its part, flew away without an answer to the one question it most wanted resolved: Taiwan.

On the trade side, the headline wins were real, if provisional. China agreed in principle to buy more American oil — routed through terminals in Louisiana and Alaska — and to purchase more soybeans. American tech CEOs were in the room. Deals were announced. But as one analyst put it bluntly: this is a term sheet, not a signed transaction. China has a history of making these gestures and not following through, and at least a few people in that room knew it.

“China has signed a lot of term sheets. I’ll believe it when they’ve actually paid for the soybeans.”— FOX BUSINESS ANALYST, ON-AIR COMMENTARY

The energy angle is arguably the most strategically interesting piece. The U.S. was exporting roughly 400,000 barrels of oil per day to China at its 2024 peak — a number analysts say has enormous room to grow. The logic here goes beyond commerce: the more dependent China becomes on American energy, the less freely it can act as a geopolitical adversary. It’s an old playbook — use trade as a leash — and it has a mixed track record. But in the context of an ongoing Iran conflict that has already shut the Strait of Hormuz and sent energy prices spiking globally, having China on the American side of the energy ledger matters.

Speaking of the Strait — nobody expects China to actually help police it. The more realistic scenario, and the one that seems to have emerged from Beijing, is that China simply won’t hinder U.S. efforts. It told Iran it won’t pay tolls to move oil through the Strait. That’s not exactly a military alliance, but it’s something. China relies on the Strait more than almost any other country; blocking it hurts Beijing as much as anyone. Self-interest is doing the work that diplomacy can’t.

WHAT WASN’T SAID — AND WHY IT MATTERS

• Trump refused to answer whether he would send troops if China moved on Taiwan
• He refused to even confirm Taiwan was discussed
• Secretary Rubio signaled that ambiguity is intentional — it’s the strategy
• A non-answer keeps China guessing; a firm answer either emboldens or commits

Then there’s Taiwan — the subject Trump refused to touch with a ten-foot pole. When asked directly whether he’d commit troops to Taiwan’s defense, his answer was essentially: I’m the only one who knows, and I’m not telling you. Some read that as evasion. Others — including Secretary Rubio — see it as the smartest possible posture. Strategic ambiguity has kept the Taiwan Strait relatively stable for decades. A U.S. president who answers that question definitively either gives China a green light or locks America into a commitment. Trump chose the third option: say nothing, loudly.

Back home, markets spent the week trying to process all of this alongside some genuinely conflicting economic signals. The good: New York manufacturing hit a four-year high in May, chip demand remains ferocious (Nvidia quietly crossed a $5.7 trillion market cap), and consumer debt-delinquency risk just hit its lowest point in over two years at 11.4%. The less good: the prices-paid index in manufacturing jumped to its highest since July 2022, 30-year bond yields are sitting above 5%, and global bond markets — Japan’s included — are flashing inflation warnings that economists say aren’t just an American problem anymore.

“If everything is going so great, why are we running a $2.3 trillion annual deficit? That’s the question nobody wants to answer.”— FOX BUSINESS ANALYST, ON-AIR COMMENTARY

The AI boom is real, and almost everyone agrees on that. But the honest version of the story is that we’re still in the investment phase, not the payoff phase. Cisco — the dot-com era’s cautionary tale — is now being held up as a poster child for the AI moment, which is either a hopeful reframe or a sign that memory is short, depending on your disposition. The AI infrastructure bottleneck keeps shifting: first it was chips, then memory, now it’s the optical connectivity needed to move data fast enough to feed the computation. Anyone claiming to know who the definitive winner will be is getting ahead of the evidence.

What’s clear is that Trump went to Beijing carrying the American economy as a bargaining chip — and by most measures, it’s a strong hand. Energy dominance, AI leadership, manufacturing momentum. Whether the deals that were sketched out in that 2½-hour room actually get signed, funded, and delivered is the question that will define the next chapter. Term sheets have a way of expiring quietly. The champagne doesn’t.