China and the United States agreed to cut $30 billion in tariffs and talk about AI during Xi Jinping's visit with Donald Trump. Beijing announced this. Nobody else confirmed it. The White House press corps spent three days watching two men shake hands while their respective propaganda machines wrote completely different versions of what happened.
Personal diplomacy showcased itself. Big public breakthroughs did not. This is what happens when you send leaders to a room for seventy-two hours and tell them to figure out trade policy between photo ops. They emerge with a number that sounds impressive to people who don't know what $30 billion represents as a percentage of total bilateral trade. It's roughly 4 percent. Your Robinhood account has bigger daily swings.
The AI dialogue part is my favorite. Two governments that can't agree on semiconductor export controls or rare earth minerals or whether Taiwan is a country decided they'll have a productive conversation about artificial intelligence regulation. That'll go great. I'm sure the technical working groups will hash out the details right after they finish their seventeen-year argument about intellectual property theft.
Retail traders saw "tariff cut" in the headline and bought calls on Chinese ADRs because they think geopolitics works like a light switch. It doesn't. It works like two guys agreeing to disagree slightly less loudly while their trade negotiators spend the next six months walking back every commitment made during the summit.
The summit ended Friday. By Monday, both sides will claim victory. By Wednesday, someone will leak that the $30 billion figure includes tariffs that were already scheduled to expire. By next month, Trump will threaten new tariffs on electric vehicles and Xi will respond by banning another American tech company nobody heard of.
But sure, tell yourself this changes anything about your garbage portfolio.
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