The Daily Populous Saturday May 16th, 2026 day edition
Authored by pbs.org and submitted by lire_avec_plaisir

For perspective on the summit between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Amna Nawaz spoke with Nicholas Burns. He served as U.S. ambassador to China during the Biden administration and is now at Harvard University.

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

From more perspective on the summit, we turn now to Nicholas Burns. He served as U.S. ambassador to China during the Biden administration. He's now professor of the practice of diplomacy and international relations at Harvard University.

Ambassador Burns, welcome back to the "News Hour." It's good to see you.

So let me ask you what we heard from Chinese state media, who have been reporting after the summit that Trump and Xi reached a new series of common understandings, a new vision of the U.S.-China relationship.

What are they saying here? And is that good for the U.S.?

The Chinese want a strategic stability initiative, as they're calling it, with the United States. It's really a set of -- as I understand it, of formal obligations of one to the other.

That could be a poison pill. For instance, they might want to say to us, and I think they would, you can't criticize us in public because we have this formal stability relationship.

Well, of course, we can't abide that, given the enormous differences we have on issue after issue. I was reassured that the Trump administration did not pick up on it. You didn't hear President Trump or Secretary of State Rubio say that they were intrigued by it.

They have tried this in the past, Amna. We have always turned them down.

What about what we did hear from President Trump during this trip? He was very upbeat about all the meetings. He called them extremely positive, very productive. He praised Xi Jinping quite a bit, called him a great leader, said repeatedly what an honor it was to be there and to be his friend.

What did you make of that approach?

It's understandable that President Trump wanted to be polite and civil. He's visiting someone else's country. That's -- I think all Americans would want him to be polite and civil.

But to effusively praise Xi Jinping as a great leader in positive terms and that he -- he, President Trump, will have a fantastic relationship with him, which is the word he used, I thought it was over the top.

And from Chinese ears, it sounded like President Trump was a supplicant and therefore in a weakened position in cultural terms. And think about what President Trump was saying. Xi Jinping is a great leader?

Xi Jinping is the leader who commanded these cyberattacks against the American grid and the American economy. He's the leader whose military is trying to overtake our military in the Indo-Pacific. He's also a major human rights violator.

So, frankly, I thought it was a mistake for President Trump to do this. You didn't see Xi Jinping reciprocate that kind of elaborate, over-the-top praise for President Trump. He stuck to his issues. And I thought it made us look weak as a country and China look strong.

And that's not a good look for us.

So, in concrete terms -- and, again, we don't have a lot of details yet, but, so far, what do you think was accomplished on this trip that is in the U.S. interest?

First, it was very important that they met, because there were the two leading economies, two strongest militaries. China is a top-down government. Xi Jinping is the ultimate decision-maker for nearly everything. And so our president has to have a good working relationship with him. President Biden did, and now President Trump does.

So I thought that the effort that President Trump made to go there with his Cabinet, with the business delegation, made sense. It makes sense to invite Xi Jinping back to the United States. They want to take -- talk three or four times this year. All that, good.

In addition, the Chinese have agreed to a major purchase of American agriculture. China is the largest market for our farm and ranch community. This is very important for soybean farmers, wheat farmers, pork products. And so it should be a shot in the arm to our farm economy.

You announced -- or they announced this Boeing deal, where China will purchase at least 200 commercial airliners from Boeing, which is also important.

And what was little noted, Amna, but I think very important perhaps, was what President Trump said today, and Scott Bessent seconded it, that China apparently has agreed to have a set of conversations with us on artificial intelligence and the security implications of some of these powerful new A.I. models, the Mythos model of Anthropic, for instance, which, in the wrong hands, a cyber terrorist group or a criminal group could be enormously damaging to the global economy.

It makes sense that we would talk to China about this. And I thought all of those were accomplishments of this trip.

Ambassador, the issue of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, you heard President Trump say that Xi Jinping pressed him on U.S. support for Taiwan. He said he wouldn't commit to it either way.

What do you take away from that?

The Taiwan Relations Act, which is United States law, was passed in 1979 by Congress. And it says that the United States government must provide defensive military technology to Taiwan to defend itself and build up its deterrence. Every American president since 1979 has done so, and no American president has actually talked to the Chinese or debated or discussed with the Chinese whether we should do that.

President Trump today on Air Force One, when he gave his press conference, equivocated on this. In fact, he left the impression that he might decide not to proceed with the arms sales. I think that would overturn our entire policy towards Taiwan.

It would send a very, very negative message to our allies in the region, very close to Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea. It would make the United States look like we were backing away from our responsibilities.

Now, he hasn't said he will not sell, but he did leave that impression today. I thought it was a really difficult conversation to understand at times on Air Force One. But I'm worried that we might be backing away. And I hope very much that the president will determine to go ahead with the arms sales.

Because Xi Jinping, Amna, his major message at the summit yesterday morning, was to try to intimidate the United States, that if you cross our red lines, he said, on Taiwan, that we will end up in a conflict. We should not be intimidated or coerced by the Chinese president. No prior president has.

That is former U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns.

Ambassador Burns, always great to speak with you. Thank you for your time.

clydewoodforest on May 16th, 2026 at 09:05 UTC »

Can we just be glad that the visit passed without egregious offense, Trump selling Taiwan, or WW3.

lire_avec_plaisir on May 16th, 2026 at 02:16 UTC »

Ambassador Nicholas Burns comments that President Trump's comments were "over the top" and make China look strong and the US a "supplicant." Burns has extensive State Dept experience and previously served as US Ambassador to China.

Ornery-Lynx-3520 on May 16th, 2026 at 02:15 UTC »

I’d suggest the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a significantly more prominent sign of the USA’s weakness than the current POTUS yet again fawning over autocrats.