It looks like President Donald Trump’s China visit will wind up as positively as anyone could reasonably hope.
His host, Xi Jinping, offered at least lip service support for Washington’s central goals in Iran: permanent free passage of the Strait of Hormuz and a never-nuclear Islamic Republic.
As important, Beijing gave the president a warm welcome, delivering all due honors to Trump, excellent food and even a “YMCA” serenade.
Notably, Xi’s talk of “the Thucydides trap” could signal a sincere desire to avoid serious enmity.
(The “trap” refers to 4th century BC Greece, when conflict between dominant power Sparta and rising power Athens led to decades of warring that left both powers reduced; a US-China war now, of course, risks world annihilation.)
Another good sign: Xi accepted Trump’s invitation for a return visit to Washington, likely in September.
Having the two world leaders meet and break bread together regularly is surely cause for hope that they can control their rivalry.
That said, it won’t be easy.
For starters: Everyone in the US delegation, from President Donald Trump down to the lowliest reporter, got told to use burner phones and email addresses for the whole trip, because the Chinese would try to hack them nonstop.
Add to that a lot of bullying below the top level, as The Post’s Emily Goodin reports: Journalists kept from the action (and denied water in the heat), a White House staffer trampled by Chinese media (themselves just a government tool), a Secret Service agent kept out of official events.
The US press corps literally had to make a break for it to stay with the presidential motorcade at one point.
And of course Xi’s public support for opening the Strait of Hormuz and ensuring Iran never goes nuclear amounts to words, not action.
Meanwhile, US officials are telling the press that Beijing has still been plotting to send arms to Tehran; time will tell if that changes.
Then there’s Taiwan: The Chinese again politely pushed their guests to soften US support for the island democracy, which the Americans politely ignored.
As Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained back in DC, “US policy on the issue of Taiwan is unchanged . . . They always raise it on their side. We always make clear our position and we move on to the other topics.”
Both sides know AI is central to the future, and that Taiwan will be central to building AI chips for at least another decade: No way will the American president let China take over the island democracy — especially not after how it treated Hong Kong.
US-China relations will inevitably be strained for the foreseeable future: If this summit can keep tensions low, despite the hosts’ provocations, it’ll be a triumph for Trump.
And when he gets home, he can start planning a warm September reception for Xi in DC.
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Trump in China, from Elon Musk to Jensen Huang (Nvidia): the US president’s 17 traveling companions.
American tech and finance leaders, from Apple CEO Tim Cook to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink are emerging. , arrived in Beijing even before the president. Elon Musk , who traveled aboard Air Force One, after the arguments and the cold reconciliation, signs of a return to cordial relations between the two former executives best buddy.
And the spectacular “recovery” of Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia : mission he wasn’t part of the presidential announced by the White House, but, thanks to a last-minute call, he joined Trump during his stopover in Alaska to refuel. Thus, the president arrived in Beijing surrounded not so much by diplomats and geopolitical experts as by entrepreneurs and trade negotiators . “Brilliant people,” he calls them.
Leaders of many of the most powerful groups in American technological and financial capitalism have prompted some to quip: “The tycoons of US capitalism are arriving in China accompanied by Donald Trump.” An irony, of course, especially since this is not an absolute first: nine years ago, during his first term in office, Trump was accompanied by a delegation of businessmen twice as large as the current one.
But this time, business leaders are more useful to a president who arrives at the negotiations with Xi Jinping weakened on several fronts : the weapon of tariffs has largely been blunted because many of those he introduced have been declared illegitimate by the judiciary; the domestic economy is suffering from soaring inflation and falling wages, even though the stock market is doing well and GDP is growing thanks to massive investments in artificial intelligence; the impossibility of reopening Hormuz with military force, which is forcing Trump to ask the Chinese leader for help .
And so, the president, whose priority is Hormuz, presents a business-oriented agenda : he says his first request to Xi is to open up to American companies. And he promises “magical” effects on the Chinese economy. Nothing new: it was 1998 when Bill Clinton explained to CCP leaders in Beijing that liberalism applied to trade works miracles.
But there are some concrete deals on the summit table that, if successful, could soften the tension between the two superpowers, allowing Trump to return home with contracts he can present as factors in reviving the US economy, rebalancing its foreign accounts, and supporting struggling sectors, such as agriculture.
To succeed, however, it will have to make concessions, especially on cutting-edge American technologies , currently off limits to the Chinese.
The very names of the business delegation indicate the mission’s goals: Robert Kelly Ortberg , the head of Boeing, is in Beijing because he hopes to seal the deal for the sale of a large number of commercial jets (we’re talking hundreds of Boeing 737 Maxes), while the presence of the CEO of an agricultural giant, Brian Sikes of Cargill, indicates Trump’s desire to pressure the Chinese to help reduce the imbalance in US-China trade, including by buying more soybeans, grains, and other foodstuffs.
The president also wants China to buy American oil and gas , now that Venezuela’s tap has been turned off and Iran’s is blocked. But the delegation doesn’t include a single representative from big oil (all of them dealing with the Hormuz crisis), and the matter is extremely sensitive: China, coming to the summit from a position of strength, doesn’t want to become dependent on supplies from its strategic adversary , which could be interrupted at any moment.
A key issue for information technology as well. American companies operating in China are complaining of significant limitations : even Elon Musk, once considered, with his Chinese factories (Tesla and solar panels), an unofficial ambassador for Beijing to the White House, is now suffering. Now, efforts are underway to restore mutual trust through business, as Tim Cook also promises: his Apple still produces a lot in China , but has moved several production lines elsewhere in Asia under pressure from Washington.
Will there be a course correction? This is the question being asked, especially with reference to the Huang mystery , recovered at the last minute. Was it an oversight by the White House that had forgotten about it, or a sign of a possible unblocking of the US-China standoff over microprocessors? After much hesitation, Trump had authorized Nvidia to export the H200 : very advanced chips, but not as advanced as the latest-generation Blackwells. So far, however, Chinese companies have not purchased them: on the one hand, Beijing is pushing for the most advanced models , on the other, it fears becoming dependent on the United States for this technology, exposing itself to the risk of sudden supply disruptions or some cyber trap. We’ll see if Huang’s covert diplomacy has produced results .
Finally, numerous investments in both directions, orchestrated not only by Fink but also by Steven Schwarzman of Blackstone, David Salomon of Goldman Sachs , and other bankers. This should be handled with caution in the media: some are already talking about America being colonized by Chinese investments, while American investments in China risk appearing to conflict with Trump’s desire to repatriate all production.
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The Hidden Cost To The American Worker From The AI Boom
While many warn that artificial intelligence itself will displace American workers, far less attention is paid to the fact that the very companies building AI are already replacing American employees with cheaper foreign labor. In many cases, though, the immediate threat to American workers is not the technology itself, but the hiring practices of the firms developing it.
In 2025, 406,348 H-1B visas were given to foreign workers in the United States, according to the latest U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data. For hundreds of thousands of Americans, that figure is a nightmare.
The H-1B visa program, created in the 1990s as a temporary work visa supposedly for highly-skilled migrants, has flooded America with millions of cheap foreign workers.
For the last few months, I have been investigating the issue of the H-1B program and its impact on Americans for a new documentary for GB News. During that process, I received a flood of messages from workers across the country describing how they were forced to train their foreign replacements, saw their jobs were sent overseas, or witnessed ethnic tribalism in hiring that shut Americans out of jobs altogether.
The largest users of the H-1B program are Big Tech companies, many of which lobby Congress aggressively against reforms that could disrupt their pipeline of foreign labor.
Tech workers in Silicon Valley, one of America’s great civilizational achievements, are now overwhelmingly foreign born. According to the 2025 Silicon Valley Inde, roughly two-thirds of Silicon Valley tech workers were born outside the United States. There are more Indian-born tech workers there than those born in California. Highly-educated tech workers from India and China outnumber those from the United States, making up 41 per cent of the workforce compared with 30 per cent.
Lawmakers should evaluate the national security implications of a strategically vital American industry becoming taken over by, and increasingly dependent on, foreigners.
But the most visceral impact of this change has been on American tech workers.
According to an analysis by Harvard economist George Borjas, H-1B workers are on average 16% cheaper to employ than their American counterparts. For each H-1B worker employers save an average of $100,000 over the six-year term of the visa. Employers then have the ability to sponsor H-1B workers for green cards, ensuring they replace American workers in perpetuity.
One Silicon Valley based employee told me she lost her job after her Indian manager forced her to hire an Indian assistant, who she was later told to train so that he could replace her. Since then, she has been struggling to find work for two years, and was forced to sell her home.
In another case, a whistleblower, who until recently worked at FedEx, said her entire team’s jobs were off-shored to India. A former Google contractor said he was told to train his replacements in the Philippines. These stories are not atypical, especially for older workers who are competing for jobs with young, cheaper foreigners.
Many have also seen ethnic tribalism in hiring. At Google one former employee said he saw Indians give other Indians confidential interview questions to help them secure jobs. Others told me similar stories, where ethnic nepotism has led to workplaces becoming hives for foreign workers who all spawned from one particular city or even village in India. One high-profile example of this can be seen in the case of Cognizant Technology Solutions, an IT consulting company founded in India. Several successful lawsuits against the company in recent years have found discrimination against non-Indian employees in hiring and promotions.
To deal with these challenges, the Trump administration has attempted to crack down on the H-1B visa. Last year a new $100,000 fee was announced which would apply to employers hiring foreign talent. While official figures on the impact on H-1B applications are not yet available, experts estimate that applications may have fallen by between 30 and 50 per cent.
However, veteran anti-immigration campaigner and lawyer Rosemary Jenks said the new fee has had little overall impact as it doesn’t apply to domestic H-1B applications. Those who convert their visas to H-1Bs, such as students, or those renewing their H-1Bs are exempt from the $100,000 charge. Jenks’ view was confirmed to me by an immigration lawyer in Silicon Valley, who said she had seen a significant increase in domestic H-1B applications.
And when it comes to foreign competition for jobs, the H-1B program isn’t the only challenge for American workers.
This week Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced it has found more than 10,000 cases of potential fraud in the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program. This scheme allows foreign students to work in the United States for up to two years after graduating (who can then convert their student visas into H-1Bs, and eventually green cards). ICE officials said they had found “empty buildings and locked doors at addresses where hundreds of foreign students are allegedly employed”.
Unlike the H-1B program, which requires employers to pay the “prevailing wage” for roles, those employed under OPT can be paid any wage. The result is that American graduates are competing for entry level jobs with foreigners who are willing, and able, to work for far less. As of last year, 294,253 students are in the US on the OPT program.
Some Republicans, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, have called for the H-1B visa to be abolished entirely. But until Congress is willing to confront the political influence of the Big Tech lobby, America’s dependence on cheap foreign labor is unlikely to end. The irony is that while Americans are told to fear displacement by artificial intelligence in the future, many are already being displaced in the present by hiring practices of the very firms building it.
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