|
U.S. President Donald Trump is in Beijing for a highly anticipated summit with his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping. It is the first U.S. state visit to China since 2017, during Trump's first administration. Trade, the Iran war, artificial intelligence and the fate of Taiwan are some of the issues being discussed, although it's not clear if any new agreements are likely. Trump traveled to China with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, along with a delegation of top U.S. executives including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Elon Musk of Tesla and Jensen Huang of Nvidia.
The summit comes after years of rising hostility between the two superpowers, but leaders recognize the importance of improving the bilateral relationship, says Zhao Hai, director of international political studies at the Institute of World Economics and Politics in Beijing. "This is a very critical historical moment [at] a crossroad, and both sides now are working together to establish a stable relationship that will have a global ramification," he says.
We also speak with Jake Werner, a historian of modern China and director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He says the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and the resulting economic chaos have strengthened China's position.
"China has ties to all the countries in the region. It has acted in the past to help broker the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran," says Werner. "So it has some experience in this realm, sort of acting as a broker towards peace."
|
|
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has announced his resignation from government.
|
|
Chinese officials are using a different transliterated character for the secretary of state's name, perhaps to allow him to visit without lifting the 2020 ban.
|
|
Trump's commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Martin Makary, has resigned. During Makary's 13-month tenure, he attempted to split the difference between Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again agenda and a more traditional approach to regulation, ultimately angering both camps. "Nobody was happy with what he did," says Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Shortly before his resignation, Makary had drawn the ire of President Trump for attempting to block the approval of fruit-flavored vapes, and anti-abortion groups for not placing harsher restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone. But even before Makary took the helm, mass layoffs and the loss of scientific expertise had already thrown the FDA, which has oversight powers extending to more than a fifth of the U.S. economy, in turmoil.
The FDA's deputy commissioner for food, Kyle Diamantis, will now assume Makary's position in an acting capacity. Diamantas, a personal friend of Donald Trump Jr., does not have a background in medicine. The abrupt leadership shakeup is worrisome for the future of health and medicine in the United States, says Dr. Robert Steinbrook, the health research director at watchdog organization Public Citizen. "We need a strong public health agency," he explains. "[But] when you pick them apart for particular theories and the idiosyncrasies of the Health and Human Services secretary, you destroy things which take years, if not decades, to rebuild."
|
|
