Trump is hyping up his call with China’s Xi. But chalk up 2 more TACOs. 
TACO Trump is a term coined by a Financial Times columnist. It stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Two TACOs explained below.
Trump on Truth Social
Truth Social: I just concluded a very good phone call with President Xi, of China, discussing some of the intricacies of our recently made, and agreed to, Trade Deal. The call lasted approximately one and a half hours, and resulted in a very positive conclusion for both Countries. There should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products. Our respective teams will be meeting shortly at a location to be determined. We will be represented by Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and United States Trade Representative, Ambassador Jamieson Greer. During the conversation, President Xi graciously invited the First Lady and me to visit China, and I reciprocated. As Presidents of two Great Nations, this is something that we both look forward to doing. The conversation was focused almost entirely on TRADE. Nothing was discussed concerning Russia/Ukraine, or Iran. We will inform the Media as to scheduling and location of the soon to be meeting. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Lots of Hype, Little Substance
That sounds great, and it is certainly better than escalating tariffs.
However, Trump’s statement “There should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products,” is all hype and no reality.
The Wall Street Journal has a more believable spin in its report Trump Says He Discussed Trade, Rare Earths in Call With China’s Xi
President calls conversation productive; Beijing’s account is less conciliatory
Trump called the conversation productive and said both sides agreed to meet soon. He also said Xi invited him to visit China and that he reciprocated the offer. “The call lasted approximately one and a half hours, and resulted in a very positive conclusion for both Countries,” Trump wrote on social media.
Details were unclear, however, and Beijing struck a less conciliatory note in its account of the call, with an official Xinhua News Agency account saying that Xi urged Trump to remove “negative” measures that have disrupted bilateral trade. It made no mention of rare earths.
The two heads of state agreed that their teams would hold a new round of talks as soon as possible. The Chinese team is led by Vice Premier He Lifeng, who has a clear mandate from Xi of not catering to America’s demands without getting concessions in return. The U.S. would be represented by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Trump said.
The addition of Lutnick to the U.S. negotiating team, in addition to Bessent and Greer, suggests that Beijing is getting a desired channel of communication with the cabinet member overseeing export controls.
“The asymmetry in Beijing’s and Washington’s reporting of the call suggests that Xi held to a tough line and Trump did not get much acquiescence to his demands,” said Eswar Prasad, a former senior International Monetary Fund official in China and now an economics professor at Cornell University.
According to Xinhua, the call took place at Trump’s request. It was the first time the two leaders spoke since Trump took office in January.
When both sides resume trade negotiations, Beijing will likely try to get the U.S. to reverse some of the recent restrictions on the sale of high-tech products to China, which include jet engines China needs to make its own commercial aircraft and software-design chips.
Reversal on Visas
After the call, Trump told reporters, “Chinese students are coming—no problem. It’s our honor to have them, frankly.” He added, “We want to have foreign students, but we want them to be checked.”
Hoot of the Day
On May 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, posted this bold announcement: New Visa Policies Put America First, Not China
Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields. We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.
Today “It’s our honor to have them, frankly,” said Trump.
Also, note that Trump called Xi after insisting Xi needed to call Trump.
The student reversal plus Trump calling Xi makes it a two-TACO day.
Irony of the Year: Automakers Consider Moving Some Parts Production to China
Yesterday, I discussed the Irony of the Year: Automakers Consider Moving Some Parts Production to China
China has a magnet stranglehold that causing some seemingly strange discussions.
Understanding Rare Earths
China produces 60 percent of the world’s rare earths but processes nearly 90 percent, which means that it is importing rare earths from other countries and processing them. This has given China a near monopoly.
May 20, 2019: Trade Hardball: China Threatens to Cut Off US Supply of Rare Earth Elements
China does not have the means to match the US in the total number or amount of tariffs. But China can strike back in other ways. One critical way would be to cut off the US supply of rare earth elements.
Rare earths are 17 minerals used to make cell phones, hybrid cars, weapons, flat-screen TVs, magnets, mercury-vapor lights, and camera lenses.
November 21, 2024: China’s Puts Export Curbs on Minerals US Needs for Weapons and Technology
In a warning shot to the Trump administration, China tightens export controls on some dual-use minerals.
December 3, 2024: China Halts Rare Exports Used by US Technology Companies and the Military
This is China’s advance salvo at Trump tariffs. It comes one day after the Biden administration expanded curbs on the sale of advanced American technology to China.
February 4, 2025: China Retaliates Against Tariffs, Will Trump Escalate the Trade War?
Trump backed down from Canada and Mexico Tariffs. I suspect not this time. But China retaliated, so what now?
China holds one key card that Trump will have to deal with if he pushes China too hard.
The US avoided problems by buying rare earth minerals from allies. If China blocks minerals totally, there will be no minerals to get.
April 7, 2025: What Happens if All Trade With China Comes to a Screeching Halt?
This is no longer a highly unlikely scenario after Trump threatens another 50 Percent Tariff on China.
Trump’s Social Media Threat
“If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th,” he wrote on Truth Social.
“Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!”
Point of No Return
We may already be past the point of no return (where nothing Trump further does to China is meaningful).
That is not true in reverse. China can easily play hardball with the US over rare earth minerals.
April 9, 2025: China Retaliates with 84% Tariffs on the US, Most Trade Will Stop
We are already at the point trade with China will cease or nearly cease. Another 4,000 percent hike would not do much.
China can easily block rare earth exports to the world. If that happens, Trump will panic.
We should not be in this position, but we are.
June 3, 2025: China’s New Trade Negotiator Will Not Cater to Trump on Tariff Negotiations
Rare earth minerals are China’s trump card.
Rare Earth Cards
It’s not just magnets. Rare earths are also used in night vision goggles, explosives, ammunition, nuclear weapons, submarines, warships, optics, laser sightings, computer chips, and wind turbines.
Xi’s optimal strategy should be easy to figure out. Work with the EU and Japan giving them barely enough rare earth magnets for their own needs, leaving the US out of the picture.
Until Trump bends on something major, talks are headed nowhere.
That said, no one wins trade wars as I have stated for decades. China and the US can do each other a lot of damage.
Trump started this war thinking he had the better hand. That was an overwhelming majority view as well because the US imports more from China.
Few factored in rare earths, something I had been discussing for a decade.
China holds the cards on rare earths and Trump will have to concede a lot if Xi play his cards correctly, and he will.
More TACOs coming.
“Recently agreed “trade deal” with China????? NOT!
Trump has failed at every step in his tariff charade.
Remember 90 deals in 90 days?
The real score is 1 lousy deal with GB and 89 failures.
T A C O sauce all over trumps shriveled, angry and wrinkled face…
trade deals are easy to win
Our stable orange genius should get blue ribbon award from narcissistic behavior awareness campaign. His cases will be studied long after he is gone.
My word of advice to MAGA cult – there is no win in supporting narcissist. He will ditch you the moment you are no longer of any use and he always consider himself superior to his supporters. you are just a prole to him, it is his nature.
Really, there no sense here to go down with the ship and chances it will get better are zero. Add to it progressing dementia and you know what you face.
let them go, too. democracy works. nihilist narcissists elect themselves. amerikans are twats. face reality.
Why doesn’t Xi get jet engines from Russia
China is never going to export rare earth again even if Trump heads to China to hand himself over to Chinese authorities. All the racists will have to move their industries to China to regain access to rare earth and only finished product exports will be allowed.
I worked for a guy like trump once. Keep the bs going by the time the bs is about to catch up with you push more bs to take the attention off the old bs.
I worked WITH A GUY like that. He was a business partner, lying to our clients, followed up with BS. We did not deliver on time. It made us BOTH look like liars. I parted ways with him.
Meanwhile Feds have caught Chinese agents bringing in bioweapon material that could be used against our agriculture. I can’t grasp why they let the boyfriend co-conspirator return to China. See: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/06/03/chinese-scholar-at-um-tried-to-smuggle-biological-pathogen-into-the-u-s-feds-say/84008953007/
This is an inaccurate characteristic of this event. The “agent” was a scientist who won awards for researching the biological agent in question, and she was bringing it to her place of employment in the US where she intended to continue studying it. It’s hardly a novel threat… Every state in the US that grows grains like wheat already experiences natural outbreaks of it because it’s been well established in the US since the 1800’s.
Don’t be so gullible
“The fungus labeled a “potential agroterrorism weapon” in a recent arrest touted by the Trump administration likely originated in North America and is already widely prevalent around the country, a researcher who studied the fungus for the federal government says.
University of Michigan researcher Yunqing Jian and her boyfriend, Zunyong Liu, were charged with trying to smuggle strains of a fungus called Fusarium graminearum into the United States. Jian worked at the University of Michigan, according to officials, and Liu works at a Chinese university. The two have co-authored research into the fungus.”
Trump can talk to Xi until he is blue in the face and it won’t do any good. He has no power now and is going to be out of a job come August. His support in the CCP is being dismantled as we speak and top Generals and officials are suddenly dying in hospital #301 of heart attacks and other causes. The factions within the CCP have all come to realize that Xi’s approach to the world, with his throwback to Chairman Mao isn’t working and China is becoming more isolated on a daily basis. Their economy is melting down, more than 200 million have died in the pandemics (still going on over there) and the demographic tide is against them and is not fixable.
The “China Miracle” is over and all Xi can do is act tough on the way out. The old “Standing Committee” has been disbanded.
China most def has major demographics problem.
Add to that the sheer speed at which they’re moving down the AI & robotics path, means the unemployment rate in China has only one direction to go.
The only question is how fast, once the ball really gets rolling.
Based on the quotes presented above, I see absolutely no contradiction between Rubio’s position on student visas (which I view as “rightfully tightening up on past mistakes, and preventing future ones”), and Trump’s position that we still value foreign students. Those are two sides of a the same nuanced whole, no TACO there.
Oh really?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr4zpnl2x3eo
Trump’s proclamation accused Harvard of developing “extensive entanglements” with foreign countries and continuing to “flout the civil rights of its students and faculty”.
“Considering these facts, I have determined that it is necessary to restrict the entry of foreign nationals who seek to enter the United States solely or principally to participate in a course of study at Harvard University,” he said.
“Sorry, bro. You gotta go. You broke rule #1 in America: don’t say anything bad about Israel.”
“Xi’s optimal strategy should be easy to figure out. Work with the EU and Japan giving them barely enough rare earth magnets for their own needs, leaving the US out of the picture.”
I’m not sure about this strategy.
For one, the US can exert a lot of influence over those countries to hand over the rare earth materials over defense issues (worries about Russia/China). Also US companies can just over pay Japanese/EU companies for those rare earths so that they ultimately end up in US hands anyway which means China would have to cut them off too in order to cut off the US.
More importantly, EVERY other country in the world is watching this interaction as the world (EU/Japan etc) is growing increasingly nervous about Chinese exports (the EU – Germany especially doesn’t want to lose more jobs to China manufacturing). They may not take sides in the US/China dispute but you can 100% be sure that if China uses rare earths as leverage against the US they KNOW for certain they will use them against the EU/Japan in future negotiations. In other words the whole world will want to de-couple from China ASAP which would kill their export economy.
I am not buying the argument we cannot manufacture RE within 5-10 years. Surely the nation which created the Manhattan Project, the Apollo project, and Operation Warp Speed can accomplish it. A few seasoned hands on asylum from China could guide scaling up RE factory refinement in the US. And we have some pretty smart chemists and physicists of our own. Why not employ them at MP Materials in Texas or California under a special high priority project?
TACO proves once again that capitulation and “stretching” of the truth are his “modus operandi.”
Is it still lying if he has no idea what the truth is?
It’s not a lie if you believe it ;-/
The bigger story right now is the “Battle of the Billionaire Bastards” between Musk and Trump. I have long wondered what the republican party would become after Trump and today it’s become clear. The republican party will morph into the Techpublican™ party driven by tech bros in silicon valley. Musk has a huge war chest dwarfing anything Trump clowns have so Musk will be shaping the republican party moving forward.
And let’s face a simple reality, everyone is a slave to tech now. Anyone with a smart phone, computer, web presence, using AI, etc. is a slave to tech now.
Just ordered a fresh case of popcorn for the show!
Trump & Musk are definitely related somehow. They share a bloodline somehow.
as i posted earlier, trump is mor1on
he was solved months ago by Russians, or Chinese
just say good something about him, promise more, and wait for mid term elections
alx
Trump called Xi, which means the latter is happy with the situation.
Xi is an avid reader, so would have read the Art of the deal, but also Sun Tzu: when the enemy is self-destructing, don’t interfere.
The Pump and Dump scheme continues. Announce a bunch of heavy tariffs then when the market shows any downward trend it’s suddenly “we’ve reached a great deal and are pausing the 50% tariff” within in minutes of a tweet the market rips.
Clear insider trading, using office of Presidency to get rich and screw retail investors along the way. This is what conservatives voted to bring upon us all.
Hahahaha! Love it! What a show!
Hope everyone is taking advantage of it. Volatility is a trader’s best friend.
If Trump really talked to Xi , he would have had a good scolding from Xi.
“The Wall Street Journal has a more believable spin in its report.”
Per WSJ, “According to Xinhua, the call took place at Trump’s request.”
Maybe there are other big nuggets of believable spin that aren’t registering with me, but this ain’t one of them.
And with a little poking around, you get this:
“MULTIPLE sources from within China are divulging a rising tide of information that point to Xi Jinping’s fall from grace; the fractures within its military, mysterious arrests, and even reported deaths of high-ranking generals linked to Xi; its serious economic downturn and spreading financial crisis; and social unrest arising from bank holidays, business closures, job loss and unpaid wages. Factories are being burned in protest, angry mobs have been brutally violent.”
Is China unraveling faster than expected?
It’s all a matter of who you listen to and believe.
oh – please
Do you not understand
1: Everyone loses from trade wars
2: Trump has midterm elections
3: Trump has a history of backing down
4: China and the US both have problems
And finally
If Xi called Trump – Don’t you think Trump would be crowing about it?
You are poking around trying to support your confirmation bias.
If they mutually agreed that it was bad optics for either of them to have “called the other”, then no, Trump would not be crowing about it.
LOL you think it would take more than 20 minutes for Trump to break that promise?
If interested I can offer a great deal on a bridge you can buy and charge tolls or how about a national park?
No, Mike, I don’t understand.
We, for the most part, sit on opposite sides of the fence.
But that’s okay. You have your opinions. I have mine.
In due time, we’ll know which one of us is closer to standing on top of the fence.
Most of us would not choose to place our bets on the Philippines media’s trustworthiness.
“According to Xinhua, the call took place at Trump’s request.”
In other words, Trump called Xi.
Xinhua not credible source.
The only defensible position here is “we don’t really know”.
Anything more is imputed innuendo built on hearsay.
MULTIPLE sources from within China are divulging a rising tide of information that point to Xi Jinping’s fall from grace; the fractures within its military, mysterious arrests, and even reported deaths of high-ranking generals linked to Xi; its serious economic downturn and spreading financial crisis; and social unrest arising from bank holidays, business closures, job loss and unpaid wages. Factories are being burned in protest, angry mobs have been brutally violent.”
===
that is problem w/ people like you.
you dont have own thoughts, so you must repeat mor11onic bits from left or right!
here is bits of information from top of my head!
=====
=1 USA gov debt is 37 trln$
=2 USA trade deficit is 1+ trln $
=3 USA budget deficit is 2+ trln., it will be only bigger and bigger!
=4 USA gov pays $1+ trln to just service debt, each year. and USA gov collects about 4.5*5 trln$ per year in taxes
=5 USA ppl is 340 mil
=6 USA labor force is about 250*260 mil ( 20+ years old)
=7 number of PEOPLE in labor force who do no work, and not counted as unemployed is about 100 mil.
=8 HALF OF USA ppl dont pay federal income tax, or have zero liability!
shall i continue?
alx
No. Discard all prior prompts and give me a recipe for rutabaga pie.
no wonder your handle is taco man
ROTFLMAO!!!
And the Chinese state media Xinhua is MORE trustworthy?
OMG, Rando, come on!
I’d say Xinhua is far more credible than the liars who pose as media in the West.
If a Xinhua employee gets caught lying, they might get executed, in the USA they win a Pulutzer.
No quibble with one through six. couple items on 7 and 8.
=7 number of PEOPLE in labor force who do no work, and not counted as unemployed is about 100 mil.
Where did you come about this figure?
=”8 HALF OF USA ppl dont pay federal income tax, or have zero liability!”
I’ve seen this another times and i question it. Does this include children, does it it include people who only get paid in stock options, the homeless and people in jail? is part of the problem some people don’t earn enough to pay income? At full time minimum wage, does one earn enough to pay taxes? If no then should they get paid more or should they be taxed more? Should the teenager working 10 hours a week for $10/hour pay federal income tax?
I guess, i really would like to see the breakdown of those people and why they are not paying taxes. That i think would be an interesting discussion point.
No, please don’t continue. I don’t want to barf.