Fareed Zakaria on Trump-Xi Meeting: It’s the Wild Card of Trump that China Finds it ‘Hard to Understand and Deal With’

EXCERPT:

ZAKARIA: “Well, a lot of those companies have businesses in China. I mean, Tesla sells lots of cars in China, and it's facing stiff competition. Tesla's market share is declining, not because the Chinese government is stopping them, but because the Chinese have a ferociously competitive EV market at home. Most of the ones you mentioned, I think, other than Meta, actually do operate there. But you're right. Trump is looking for more market access to China. My sense, Kaitlan, is, if it's about this kind of stuff, the Chinese are happy to deal. They're happy to do — be transactional. They're happy to say, 'In return for you lowering tariffs this much, we'll allow the American banks to own 10 percent more of their joint ventures in China.' The issue that they find with Trump is he's very unpredictable, he's very disruptive, and he does things like the Iran war, which completely disrupt and upend their planning. I mean, the Chinese get a lot of imported energy out of the Persian Gulf. And I think they find that — it's the wildcard of Trump that they find harder to understand and deal with. Trump as a transactional businessman, they're happy to cut a deal."