Critics are wringing their hands over the President's staggering geopolitical vulnerability in Beijing. But they fail to understand the immense strategic value of having absolutely nothing left to negotiate with.
As Donald Trump prepares to land in Beijing on Wednesday for his highly anticipated summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the chattering classes in Washington are once again descending into a predictable panic. Foreign policy experts and breathless wire reports have been quick to point out that the U.S. leader is entering these talks from a uniquely vulnerable position. They cite the turbulent economic backdrop, the precarious tightropes of Tehran and Taiwan, and the glaring reality that the United States hasn't had a coherent trade strategy in nearly a decade.
To which I say: finally.
We have spent so much time in this country fetishizing the concept of leverage that we have completely forgotten the serene, frictionless beauty of showing up to a superpower summit with absolutely no cards left to play. For decades, American presidents have gone to China burdened by the exhausting mandate to project strength. They spend weeks preparing tedious talking points on human rights, intellectual property theft, and currency manipulation. It is terrible for the digestion, and worse, it makes the state dinners incredibly awkward.
I was having drinks last weekend with a prominent venture capitalist at his compound in Jackson Hole, and he articulated the mood of the business community perfectly. When you have leverage, he explained over a rather exquisite single-malt, you are obligated by the press to actually use it. Using leverage inevitably upsets the global supply chain. But when you are completely compromised, you can simply relax, enjoy the Peking duck, and let the adversary dictate the terms.
It was a profound insight, and one that the Beltway media fundamentally misunderstands. The press frames the President's weakness as a crisis. I see it as a breakthrough in modern appeasement diplomacy.
Take the so-called hazard of Taiwan. The pundits want Trump to walk a delicate diplomatic line, balancing our historic democratic commitments with our economic realities. But is that really necessary? I recently sat next to a very senior executive at a major consumer electronics firm on a flight from San Jose, and his perspective was remarkably refreshing. He pointed out that geopolitical ambiguity is incredibly bad for third-quarter earnings.
If Trump simply hands over the keys to the South China Sea, we instantly remove a massive layer of quarterly uncertainty. It is a small sacrifice for the twenty-three million people of Taiwan, certainly, but one they should be proud to make for the overall health of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Is it really so wrong to ask a vibrant island democracy to quietly dissolve itself so that my portfolio can finally break a twelve percent annual yield?
We have run the macroeconomic models, and the preservation of a free and open Indo-Pacific simply does not justify the hit to our margin on semiconductor imports.
Trent is absolutely right, and his courage in saying the quiet part loud is exactly the kind of thought leadership we need right now. When Trump last visited Beijing in 2017, he made the mistake of trying to project dominance. I was fortunate enough to be adjacent to that delegation, and the energy was entirely wrong. We spent hours locked in stuffy conference rooms arguing over soybean tariffs and steel dumping.
Do you have any idea how tedious it is to listen to mid-level bureaucrats argue about agricultural subsidies while you are waiting for a private tour of the Forbidden City? It was like watching a divorced man try to suck in his gut at a pool party. It was exhausting for everyone involved.
This time, there is no gut-sucking. We are letting it all hang out, geopolitically speaking. By entering the Great Hall of the People from a position of staggering weakness, Trump is freeing Xi Jinping from the chore of having to pretend to listen to us.
The same logic applies to the Tehran situation. The media insists that Iran's growing partnership with Beijing is a massive headache for the administration. They call it a hazard on the tightrope. But the hand-wringing over Middle Eastern stability is largely a symptom of people who don't understand how exhausting it is to constantly pretend America has a red line.
If we simply admit that we have no mechanism to stop Beijing from buying Iranian oil, we save the State Department thousands of hours in drafting sternly worded memos. That is a massive reduction in administrative overhead. We keep treating Tehran like a hazard, but have we considered that maybe a heavily armed, emboldened Iran is exactly what the global shipping industry needs to keep maritime insurance premiums exciting?
Which brings us to the broader issue of trade. The critics argue that the President is hoping for economic wins but lacks the leverage to secure them. This betrays a profound lack of imagination about what an economic win actually looks like in the twenty-first century.
An economic win does not mean extracting concessions from a superpower rival. An economic win means ensuring that the factories in Shenzhen continue to churn out affordable luxury goods without interruption, regardless of whose flag is flying over the region. When you have nothing to lose, because you have already surrendered your manufacturing base decades ago, you are truly free.
There is a profound, zen-like tranquility that washes over a nation when it finally accepts its role as a regional vassal state.
The tightrope metaphor that the media loves to deploy is particularly instructive here. They say the President is walking a tightrope between domestic expectations and foreign realities. But what they fail to mention is that if you simply lie down on the tightrope and go to sleep, you don't have to balance anymore.
We need to stop viewing these upcoming trade negotiations as a zero-sum game where America has to win something. What if the real victory is the despots we accommodate along the way?
If all goes to plan over the next few days in Beijing—and I sincerely hope it does—we might just witness the most seamless, frictionless, and accommodating collapse of American influence in a generation. The President has a historic opportunity to walk into that summit, shake hands with Xi Jinping, and ask him where to sign. And frankly, my portfolio has never been better positioned for it.