“Never Rule Anything Out With Trump:” WH Reporter on China Trip

PAULA NEWTON: Now, as we’ve said, it’s been nearly 10 years since President Trump first visited China in 2017. And it’s fair to say in that time, a lot has changed between the war in Iran, tariffs, Taiwan, and tech leaders. Many are wondering what issues Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will prioritize during this historic trip. New York Times White House correspondent Tyler Pager joins Walter Isaacson to discuss which global issues could influence this meeting and what Trump might be hoping to achieve.

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Paula. And Tyler Pager, welcome to the show.

TYLER PAGER: Thanks so much for having me. Walter.

ISAACSON: Inflation this week shot up 3.8% exceeding expectations. Some of that’s fuel costs, some of that is tariffs. Both those things are gonna be the, on the agenda when President Trump meets this week with President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Let’s start with the fuel price thing. To what extent is it going to be President Trump’s goal to get the Chinese president to help open the Strait of Hormuz and bring down fuel costs?

PAGER: Well, Walter, it’s certainly going to be top of mind for the president when he arrives in Beijing. And you’ll remember that the president — President Trump, that is — originally postponed this trip. He was supposed to go to Beijing in April, and he pushed it back to May because the war had broken out. He was hoping to arrive in Beijing with this conflict behind him. And obviously it’s not. And so, regardless of the other topics that both leaders wanted to address, it’s going to be unavoidable that the leaders are going to have to work through this conflict and the impacts it’s having on both countries and the global economic system. So it’ll certainly be top of mind. What role Trump asks Xi Jinping to play, or vice versa, obviously remains unclear, but we’ve already seen China play an important role in getting Iran to agree to an earlier ceasefire. So we know that China can exert pressure on Iran, and whether or not the president, President Trump, asks him to get involved is unclear, but it’s certainly going to dominate the conversation in Beijing.

ISAACSON: Who needs the Straits of Hormuz to open more, China or the U.S.?

PAGER: That’s a great question, and they both do. I mean, for President Trump, it is a huge domestic political problem and an economic one because of the way in which the entire world relies on the Strait. For China, it is a key waterway for them to get oil and gas into the country. So both leaders have huge political constituencies that they need to get this strait reopened. And for President Trump, it is a conflict that is dragging him down politically with his own base and with the rest of the country, but it’s also distracting him from other things he wants to do. As we — you know, I’m sure we’ll talk about Cuba and other foreign policy objectives the president has. The U.S. military is heavily tied up in the Middle East right now, which is constraining his ability to do other things.

ISAACSON: Well, let’s also talk about tariffs, which I assume are a component of the bad inflation numbers we just got. Which means by the way, that the Fed’s not gonna lower interest rates like he wants. Part of the tariffs are China — I think it’s up to 30, sometimes 40% tariffs with China. Are they gonna try to lower it at the summit?

PAGER: I mean, I think that is a huge agenda item for the Chinese and something that is certainly going to be discussed. The president, you know, put these tariffs on from the first term, and President Biden continued them. And so what Trump’s mindset is that he wants to strike a new deal. He said that the tariffs were up because the U.S. had been ripped off by China for years. And so I think one of the deliverables we could see from this summit, we’ve seen some early reporting about this, is increased economic investment and economic partnerships between the U.S. and China and private companies. We saw that there’s a long list of high profile CEOs traveling as part of the U.S. delegation. And so I think that is an area where we could see some progress in terms of new trade deals and lowering of these tariff barriers.

But as always, with President Trump on the world stage, he’s unpredictable. And so we’ll just have to sort of wait and see what sort of deals are ironed out and whether they are memorandums of understanding or really the beginning of negotiations or the final conclusion of negotiations and real trade deals being announced. It’s oftentimes the rhetoric obscures the real deal, the real deals.

ISAACSON: Well, you just talked about the CEOs traveling with them, a whole bunch of them. You wrote about it in the New York Times. It was a very long list of Tim Cook, Elon Musk, some others. Why is he taking over all these CEOs and what does he plan to announce with them?

PAGER: Yeah, I mean, I think we are waiting to hear exactly what is going to be announced as part of this trip. Oftentimes, we get that information just before it’s announced or when he announces it himself. But it’s clear that the, you know, the Trump administration wants to increase foreign investment in the United States. Trump has been very clear that he wants foreign countries, foreign companies to build factories and move manufacturing back into the United States. How plausible that is is up for debate. But it’s clear that these, these, these high profile CEOs going to China is part of this effort to try to increase investment in the United States. It’s been a huge talking point of the president. You often hear him say, The United States has never been this hot. Everyone wants to invest in the country.

And countries foreign leaders are realizing that is a way to get on Trump’s good side is by announcing investment deals in the U.S. But that’s very different with China. And there are some prominent conservatives, prominent Republicans, who are raising concern and alarm about Chinese foreign investment in the United States. This is something that Trump and other Republicans have talked tough on and limiting Chinese access to U.S. markets. This is obviously a shift in policy if Trump does allow increased or really robust Chinese investment. So it’s unclear exactly what is going to be announced, but just sort of the murmurs of increased Chinese investment is raising alarm among a bipartisan group of experts lawmakers here in the United States.

ISAACSON: Well, lemme drill down on a very specific type of Chinese investment, which is sort of the ones that fall — involve national security restrictions we’ve placed. A lot of the China hawks in the administration want those restrictions. Might Trump lift some of those national security restrictions?

PAGER: We’ve seen him toy with that. And that is a concern of, as you said, national security professionals and, and China hawks. But I think one of the things to remember about Trump is his rhetoric about China — we’ve seen on the presidential campaign trial — has not always matched his policy approach. For Trump, What matters most is cutting deals, and he has used anti-China rhetoric in part to try to create opportunities to strike what he thinks are better deals for the United States when it comes to trade and commerce. So there is great trepidation within some of even Trump’s own allies that he’s going to lift some of these restrictions, as you just outlined, as part of this negotiating process. Again, it will depend on exactly what he announces and says. But I think the relationship with China and the United States is sometimes so based on rhetoric, particularly as it relates to Taiwan and the status quo of the, of how the U.S. talks and recognizes Taiwan, that even a slight rhetorical shift could change policy. And with Trump, who often is, goes off script off the cuff, there are some even in his own administration that are proceeding cautiously as they wait and see what he might say in Beijing.

ISAACSON: One of the things I just don’t understand about Trump, it seems the simplest thing is, does he want more trade with China or does he want as say, Vice President Vance, seems to want less trade with China.

PAGER: It seems that he wants more trade with China, but I think it, and sometimes depends on the political circumstances and climate that he’s existing in and the broader economic conditions. The president has made pretty clear that he sees all these other countries investing in the United States and trading with the United States as a positive thing. Trump doesn’t seem to share as many of the concerns that Vice President Vance and others do, at least publicly. One of the most striking things about Trump’s relationship with China is when you ask him about it, the — whenever you bring up China, the first thing that the president almost always says is, I have a great relationship with Xi Jinping. That is very different — that’s very different rhetoric than we saw from the president on the campaign trail in 2016, in 2020, in 2024 when he railed against China and painted it as a threat to America’s economy, American livelihoods. But that’s not always been the policy approach that he’s taken. So in part, it’s a difficult thing to answer your question because Trump’s posture and rhetoric around China is constantly evolving.

ISAACSON: I think even his supporters would say that President Trump’s not actually perfect at carefully calibrating nuances of what he says. He sometimes just says things without filtering them. What are you worried about or what are they worried about when it comes to describing issues like we will not or we will support Taiwan independence?

PAGER: Yeah, I think there are concerns within the U.S. intelligence community, lawmakers on Capitol Hill, diplomats around the world, who are fearful that the status quo about the way in which the U.S. interacts with China as it pertains to Taiwan will shift. Because it is largely based on status quo, based on precedent and based on public statements that have been made in the past. Trump doesn’t often really care about precedent. And so if he shifts the U.S. policy towards — so, you know, being more lenient towards China’s position on Taiwan. China obviously wants to reunify with Taiwan and take control of it. That is, it will be very interesting to see how the president, president Trump handles Xi Jinping on this issue. And when —

ISAACSON: Wait, wait, explain more lenient. Does that mean we might slow down arm sales to Taiwan?

PAGER: I mean, it’s a, I think that’s unclear, right? What exactly, I mean, a law bipartisan group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill are trying to make clear the U.S. position on Taiwan through congressional legislation and resolutions. But I, I just pose that as more lenient because it’s unclear what Trump is going to say and any shift in rhetoric because the words are so precise and they matter so much as it pertains to the U.S. position on Taiwan. And it’s different, the difference between the U.S. position on Taiwan and China’s position on Taiwan. If Trump is not careful with his language, diplomats have raised that China could interpret that as a change in the U.S. policy on Taiwan.

ISAACSON: Do you think he could make a conscious trade off decision to be more lenient on Taiwan as you put it in return for helping to open the Strait of Hormuz?

PAGER: I am wary of not making any sort of predictions when it comes to Donald Trump’s foreign policy, but I will say that is a concern of people I have spoken to in recent days ahead of this trip.

ISAACSON: You mentioned earlier in this conversation that he might wanna move on to other things. He is kinda mired in Iran at the moment. But he’s sort of eyeing Cuba every now and then. I think what happened in Venezuela maybe emboldened him on Cuba. But maybe what happened in Iran gave him pause. What do you think his thinking on Cuba is now?

PAGER: Yeah, well, Walter, I absolutely agree with you that the operation in Venezuela certainly emboldened the president to go ahead with an attack on Iran. Obviously there were other factors there that played a role, but the military success and speed at which they were able to capture Maduro and start working with an interim government absolutely set the tone for the president to engage in other military action around the world. Cuba is clearly a place that Trump wants to exert more power and control over. I think they have been slowed in their ability to do so because of the military buildup and commitments in the Middle East. But the president has said in recent days, Cuba is going to fall. The regime is going to collapse, and he wants to expedite that.

We know that he’s been frustrated that the pressure campaign in the U.S. has been building up against Cuba has not led to a full collapse of the regime yet. The exact timing of when we’re going to see even more pressure exerted on Cuba is unclear. But it is, what is clear, Walter, is that the president is committed to exerting more pressure on the regime and trying to force its collapse. But the sequencing of that, I think, at least from Trump’s perspective, has been in part delayed because of the lengthy military conflict with Iran.

ISAACSON: Do you think that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who you’ve covered quite a bit, is hawkish on Cuba and is pushing this?

PAGER: Rubio has made very clear his views on Cuba over the years, and this is clearly something that he is, is involved in and pushing for and believes very strongly in.

ISAACSON: I’ve enjoyed your coverage Secretary of State Marco Rubio And also you traveled, I think, with Vice President Vance on the Pakistan missions, is that right?

PAGER: Yes.

ISAACSON: Do a compare and contrast of what Rubio and Vance are doing, especially when it comes to Iran.

PAGER: Yeah, it’s a really interesting split screen. So I was on Air Force Two with Vice President JD Vance when he went to Islamabad, Pakistan for the in-person round of negotiations mediated by Pakistan with Iran. And JD Vance was sort of the face of the negotiations. He was leading that delegation with Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. And it has been a contrast because Rubio has largely been focused on Venezuela, South and Central America. And Rubio has emerged as someone who has been more associated with what Trump sees as the foreign policy success of his second term. Trump is very proud of the military operation in Venezuela, the capture of Maduro and the working relationship with Delcy Rodriguez, which has been Marco Rubio’s remit. Whereas JD Vance was someone who was opposed to going to war with Iran. He expressed his concerns in situation room meetings with the president and senior advisors about moving forward with a military conflict, and then he was tasked with trying to strike an agreement with Iran to end the war. Obviously, that agreement has been elusive.

So the two of them are sort of the faces in some ways of the two key military operations of the president’s second term. Even though they didn’t authorize those missions, they have sort of become the lead administration officials, or the most high profile administration officials, handling those. And it’s been a split screen in terms of which one Trump sees as more successful than the other. Of course, JD Vance’s work in Pakistan is somewhat bound by the president’s insistence on what a deal with Iran would look like. And so it’s not fully on him to negotiate a deal on his own because he is doing it so at the direction of the president. But it has definitely been political setback — it has definitely been a moment of political setbacks for JD Vance as he has emerged as the face of a negotiating team that has so far been unable to strike a deal with Iran.

ISAACSON: Let me read you a headline on one of your stories. It’s “Trump’s ultimatum to Iran was almost up. Then he found an off ramp.” Sometimes that’s referred to as “Taco,” Trump always chickens out. That he makes these, you know, extreme things and then has to walk them back.

Is it possible he will just scale back his demands to simply be, open the Strait of Hormuz, and declare victory?

PAGER: I, you know, never put anything off the table or rule anything out with Trump. The Iranians have seemingly made that offer now in recent weeks saying, Let’s reopen the Strait, let’s end the military blockade and kick the can down the road in terms of nuclear negotiations, Trump has so far rejected that offer.

If — could things change? Absolutely. We have not seen them yet, but I think after the China trip, there will be a moment of reckoning if the strait does not reopen and the war, there’s not a some sort of negotiated settlement, Trump will have to make a decision about whether or not he’s going to resume military activity or find an off ramp and end the conflict.

ISAACSON: Tyler Pager, thank you so much for joining us.

PAGER: Thanks so much for having me, Walter.