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Is There More Risk Than Reward In The US–China Summit?

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Do the advantages of the U.S.–China summit still outweigh the disadvantages?

Perhaps, but the negative risks are high.

President Donald Trump (left) and Chinese leader Xi Jinping shake hands before their meeting at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 30, 2025. Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo

The scheduled May 14–15 summit in Beijing between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping was intended to be a landmark “reset” between the two nations. But as the high-stakes game of chicken unfolds between Washington and Beijing, there may be more reasons not to meet than to carry on with the summit.

Why would that be?

In both principle and practice, the U.S.–China relationship has moved beyond mere trade friction into the realm of indirect military confrontation. In both countries, there are challenges on the internal political, economic, and social fronts, as well as global reputations at stake.

Any one of a number of potentially explosive geopolitical triggers could justify a second delay to the meeting.

The Hormuz Flashpoint: Chinese Weapons Threatening the US Navy?

Of course, the escalating naval war in the Middle East is one of the main reasons for the summit—and for why it may not happen.

Reports indicate that China’s transfer of “carrier-killer” anti-ship missiles to Iran could enable Iranian forces to strike a U.S. Navy vessel. If such an attack were to occur, the political optics for Trump would be disastrous. Not only would American lives and ships be at risk, but Trump’s humiliation in Beijing would be seen by the entire world.

Furthermore, at least one Chinese tanker has passed through the U.S.-led blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in April, to the distaste of the Trump administration.

For Trump, who prides himself on “strength,” does it make sense to shake hands with a leader whose technology just “painted a target” on American sailors and violated a U.S. blockade?

At the same time, the U.S. blockade, combined with the Iranian-led security controls, has made the strait a high-risk zone, even for Chinese-flagged or linked vessels. In fact, on May 4, a Chinese-owned tanker was hit by Iran, and according to some reports, several people were wounded, and the vessel was damaged.

Beijing Doubling Down on Iran

The war in Iran is both harming the Chinese regime and deepening its presence in the region. That won’t be bargained away. With fundamental disagreements on the future of Iran, there’s little, if any, prospect for long-term upside, with high risk and low probability of even short-term success.

For instance, from Beijing’s perspective, will China agree to stop buying Iranian oil or stop supplying Tehran with war materiel?

Why would Xi allow himself to be humiliated by hosting the man who kicked China out of Panama and Venezuela, and now potentially Iran?

Trade, of course, is the answer. But Trump has shown that redirecting China’s trade and manufacturing to the United States is a top priority. Therefore, any agreements are unlikely to change those objectives in the long term.

U.S. forces patrol the Arabian Sea near M/V Touska on April 20, 2026. U.S. Navy via Getty Images Israel and the Overland ‘Silk Road’ Conflict

As the U.S.–Israel coalition continues to attack Iran and the surrounding areas, the Israeli attacks have spilled over into China’s critical supply lines. The Israel Defense Forces has reportedly begun striking China’s overland supply line, its railroad in Iran, viewing it as a lifeline for the Iranian regime.

This action by the Israelis moves the conflict from a proxy war with Iran to a direct assault on Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative assets and relationships.

Regardless of its diplomatic rhetoric, Beijing will have to respond.

Any response could potentially move China into a deeper role in the war, transitioning from a neutral mediator to an active adversary of the U.S.–Israel axis. That fact alone will make the summit more awkward and confrontational, as Beijing is forced to defend its infrastructure against American-aligned forces.

Xi Faces a Perfect Storm of Multiple Risks

Xi is facing a perfect storm of dissent on multiple fronts.

Financial disruptions and acute shortages in the wake of the Hormuz Strait blockade have triggered multiple, visible public protests against the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). These events are censored, but they are happening with more frequency.

Economically, the structural slowdown in China’s economy has shifted from a “soft landing” to a hard reality, with 30 percent of China’s industrial companies operating at a loss, even as the debt-to-GDP ratio continues to rise to 300 percent.

Politically, with the 21st Party Congress approaching in 2027, Xi is in a precarious position, having to consolidate power with a depleted and purged People’s Liberation Army, while his “China Dream” is being undermined by the war in Iran. Every day the war continues, communist China’s geopolitical reputation and its economy grow weaker.

Geopolitically, there is the risk of Iran falling while Trump visits Beijing, or a massive U.S. attack on Iran during the meeting. Either would be a humiliation that Xi may find difficult to politically live down, especially given that confidence in Xi within the CCP has been waning for years.

Why would Xi take the risk of looking weak while the whole world is watching him hosting and toasting Trump? Xi must be planning to avoid this, but how?

A woman looks at a banner about the "China Dream," Chinese leader Xi Jinping's vision for China's future, in Beijing on July 7, 2015. Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’ Versus the ‘Weakness’ Trap

Perhaps the most significant psychological factor is Trump’s own brand. Many global critics and domestic opponents argue that the current global instability was “started” by his administration’s aggressive stance on Iran and trade.

But the instability in the Middle East was arguably expanded and deepened by the Biden administration, enabling the Iranian regime to fund multiple military proxies in the region and greatly enhance its military capabilities, significantly aided by China.

If Trump goes to Beijing now, he risks looking like a supplicant—a leader in need of Xi to “save” him from a widening war—giving him the appearance of needing Xi’s help to clean up the mess he made.

Could Trump use another delay as a negotiating tactic to signal that he is not desperate for a deal, especially if the negative optics of the deal outweigh the benefits?

Might Xi feel similarly?

Both are real possibilities.

Does Either Side Actually Want the Summit?

The reality is that both leaders are caught in a paradox.

For Xi, a summit offers a chance to stabilize trade, but he cannot appear to be yielding to “American hegemony” while he prepares for a fourth term. If he cannot guarantee a “win,” he would do better to cancel the summit and not give CCP critics fuel to further undermine his leadership.

For Trump, he wants the “Grand Deal” that would cement his legacy. But the “Art of the Deal” requires leverage. Right now, with the Iranian regime still in power, Trump’s leverage may be less than he thinks it is.

It’s likely that any real upsides may be short-lived and perhaps temporarily improve public relations with the rest of the world, but is that worth the downside risk for Trump or Xi?

We will soon see.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/08/2026 - 20:55

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What The Indiana Primaries Tell Us About Trump's Grip On The GOP

Tuesday night’s primaries in Indiana were not subtle. Five of seven Republican state senators who had blocked a congressional redistricting map favored by President Donald Trump lost their primary races to Trump-backed challengers. The message, delivered cleanly through the ballot box, couldn’t have been clearer.

Twenty-one Republicans in the Indiana Senate voted against a new congressional map that would likely have added two GOP-leaning U.S. House districts. Eight of those dissenters were up for reelection this cycle, and seven drew primary challengers who carried Trump's explicit endorsement. By Tuesday night, the Associated Press had projected wins for at least five of those challengers. Only state Sen. Greg Goode managed to hold his seat among the targeted incumbents. The rest are heading for the exits.

Trump's play here was neither complicated nor ambiguous. He targeted members of his own party, not for ideological apostasy or opposition to his signature policies, but for refusing to help the GOP fight back against decades of Democrat gerrymanders. It was a demonstration of leverage and political capital, and it worked.

The incumbents who lost weren't rogue progressives or even moderate Republicans, either. They were conventional Republicans who had largely supported Trump on major national issues, and didn’t expect to become Trump targets. That calculation turned out to be wrong, and the lesson other incumbents will draw is obvious: the scope of what constitutes a disqualifying defection is wider than many assumed.

And there are likely to be other victims of Trump’s wrath.

In Kentucky's 4th Congressional District, Trump has endorsed Ed Gallrein against Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican who has broken with the president on the Iran war, tariffs, and quit a few other things. In Louisiana, Trump is backing Rep. Julia Letlow against incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician who has pushed back against the administration's "Make America Healthy Again" agenda. Both of those incumbents were watching Indiana returns Tuesday night and learning something about their own futures.

CNN’s Scott Jennings made it clear that the elections signaled who controls the Republican Party… It’s Trump all the way.

"He's the boss of the party. He calls the shots in the Republican Party, and if you go against that, he will pour his wrath out upon you, and it doesn't typically turn out well." Jennings said.”If you look at what happened in Indiana tonight, and you're Thomas Massie tonight, or you're anybody else in a primary right now where Trump's on the other side of you, you've got to be thinking, this is a bad night for me."

Trump cleaned up in Indiana State Senate primary tonight. @VanJones68 and I analyze & debate presidents getting involved in state level redistricting matters on @cnn pic.twitter.com/LutBmNpX4h

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) May 6, 2026

The underlying data on Trump's standing inside the party makes all of this easier to understand, if no less striking. Back in March, an NBC News poll found that Trump had a 100% approval rating among MAGA Republicans - a number that CNN analyst Harry Enten flagged as essentially without precedent. "You don't have to be a mathematical genius to know you can't go higher than one hundred percent," Enten said. He was careful to note the distinction: "Now, there are some Republicans who disapprove of Donald John Trump, but they are not members of the Make America Great Again movement. The bottom line is this: if you are a member of MAGA, you approve of Donald Trump."

That's the context in which Tuesday's results make complete sense. Trump's grip on the GOP isn't merely rhetorical or cultural — it is electoral and operational. Indiana showed that the president is willing to spend political capital on state-level races to advance his agenda, even if tangentially. For Republican incumbents nationwide who have crossed him or are contemplating doing so, that combination — willingness and effectiveness — should worry them.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/08/2026 - 20:30

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Nick Shirley Went To Cuba... He Almost Didn't Make It Home

Authored by Sarah Anderson via PJMedia.com,

Donald Trump and Marco Rubio often accuse the Cuban regime of rolling out the red carpet for our adversaries. They're not wrong.

It actively welcomes those working against United States interests, and I'm not just talking about China, Russian, and Iran. 

If you'll remember, in March, a group of far-leftist folks from the U.S. and Europe — including members of Code Pink, commie activist Hasan Piker, and Ilhan Omar's daughter — flew into the crumblingly communist country and stayed in five-star hotels, enjoyed fancy meals, held concerts, and recorded podcasts, all while the Cuban people starve and live without electricity or water much of the time. They took photos with "president" Miguel Díaz-Canel and came back declaring that all was well on the island. 

This crew spent some of their time riding around the city and viewing the Cubans as if they were on some sort of poverty safari, and Piker said the people just had an "island mindset" and that's why they just hung around in the streets all day. They came back reporting that things were just groovy down there and would be even better if Trump and Rubio would stop bullying them. 

Well, independent journalist Nick Shirley recently visited Cuba and attempted to do the same thing... but he wanted to tell the real story of what's happening after decades of failed and corrupt communist rule.

As you can imagine, he didn't get quite the welcome the others did. Not only that, but according to him, his equipment was seized, "spies" followed him around, and he barely escaped without being "kidnapped." 

"Under communism there is no free speech, and those who show the reality or speak up are imprisoned," he posted on X on Monday evening.

"Me going without a planned Cuban government guide nearly got me and my security taken hostage or imprisoned. The situation in Cuba is much worse than anyone knows."  

Shirley has put himself in some precarious situations in the past, but this one may have been the most dangerous. Thankfully, he did make it out alive, but here's exactly what happened, according to him.  

"Depending on when this comes out — or if it does — we are currently being held by by Cuban intelligence here in Havana, Cuba," begins the 13-minute video Shirley released on Monday.

It was recorded from his iPhone in a hotel room in Cuba — that and a tiny microphone are the only pieces of equipment he says the regime didn't seize.   

Shirley goes on to explain that he's wanted to make a video about how people live under communism for a long time, but one thing he didn't consider was that under communism, there is no freedom of speech or freedom of the press. With that in mind, the moment he arrived at the airport, despite doing everything right, including documentation, he said they took his cameras, his Meta Glasses, his GoPros, and even his microphones. 

He says he wanted to show people what life is like — how there are no cars on the streets and how gasoline is $10 per gallon. He mentioned that the buildings are crumbling, there's little food, and mass poverty is everywhere. He mentioned visiting a hospital and said there was literally a line of people outside the building waiting for care, and surgeons were performing operations via flashlight. 

Shirley wasn't alone — he did bring his own security guards — and that's how he knew he was under surveillance. Apparently, they had several run-ins with undercover police and random people recording them. At some point, he claims there were "Cuban intelligence" in his hotel lobby attempting to round him and his security up and "potentially imprison us or make it so we cannot leave Cuba." That's when they decided they needed to cut the trip short and leave. 

Here's more in his own words:

So right, right now we're coming up with a game plan to escape Cuba. Our original flight is to leave on Saturday. Right now, it's Thursday, so we're going to be leaving tomorrow morning if we can make it to the airport. We're about a mile and a half away from the U.S. Embassy right now, which could be our possible way out of this situation by going to the embassy.

However, that does not stop Cubans from stopping us before we get to the embassy. It's about a mile and a half away, so we have to make it to the embassy. And ight now there's three Cubans — essentially a Cuban spy is down in the bottom of our hotel right now, and we have to figure out how we're going to escape. We're trying to get ahold of the embassy right now and see if we can stay there overnight and then buy our airplane ticket last minute so that doesn't pull off any red flags to the Cuban government before we arrive to the airport.

Shirley explained that to get out of there, he’d come up with a few options. The first was to hop from taxi to taxi and hope no one trailed them until they reached the airport. The second was to just stay inside the hotel and hope no one came for them in the middle of the night. The problem with that, he said, was that the next day was May 1, which was a major holiday in the country, and a big rally was planned just outside the hotel. The other option was to sneak out and try to make it to the embassy and get a private jet.

"This is probably the most dangerous situation I've ever been into," he said, later adding, "So if I make it out, this video gets seen. If it doesn't, I'm most likely in a prison cell, which I really hope is not the case." 

Obviously, Shirley did make it out, and he is back home and safe, but if everything he says was true, he could have very well ended up a political prisoner — joining the 1,200 or so that Cuba currently has in its torture centers. However, given what a high-profile situation that would have been, I'm not 100% convinced the regime, which is already currently under almost maximum pressure from Trump and Rubio, would have had the guts to do it. But never underestimate the stupidity of leftists... 

I'm sure we'll learn more about what happened, how Shirley escaped, and what he saw during his short trip (he says more is coming within 24 hours), but in the meantime, here's what he's released so far if you're interested in watching:  

🚨 I was almost taken hostage in Cuba...
I went to Cuba to document the humanitarian crisis and show life under 60+ years of communism and now amid the US blockade. Once I landed, they seized all my cameras except my iPhone and had intelligence agents following me all day until… pic.twitter.com/6VFQCOakGZ

— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) May 4, 2026

 

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/08/2026 - 20:05

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