Blinken you’ll miss it
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, traveled to China this week in an effort to cool the simmering geopolitical tensions between the two nations. The summit comes after Blinken skipped his trip earlier this year — canceled due to the infamous spy-balloon fiasco back in February, a flashpoint which strained US-China tensions further.
While the particulars are unknown, Blinken’s 35-minute meeting with Xi Jinping was the pinnacle of the trip. The major sticking points — trade, access to advanced technologies, Taiwan, the war in Ukraine, and more — obviously remain, but the meeting was initially hailed as a positive on both sides.
Stuck on you
China’s rise to global superpower status has been deeply intertwined with the US — no other pair of countries on Earth trade as much as the US and China. Just last year, the US imported a staggering $536 billion worth of goods from China — an increase of 6% from the previous year — resulting in a trade deficit of $382 billion in goods, according to data from the US Census Bureau.
The ongoing trade war, which is now 5 or 6 years old depending on how you define its starting point, has spread — with the recent focus on the high-tech microchip industry, rather than the heavy manufacturing focus of Donald Trump’s administration.
Some of the goodwill built up during the talks may have already evaporated. Yesterday, China reacted furiously to President Biden labeling Xi Jinping a "dictator" at a fundraiser in California on Tuesday.
