Axios Event: Industry and government leaders map out the new rules of power in global trade

WASHINGTON – Trade wars, AI disruption and rising tariffs are redrawing the global power map with ripple effects across defense, health care and beyond, top leaders said at an Axios event on May 21.

• The event was sponsored by Exiger.

Why it matters: As uncertainty looms over the economy and international trade relations, companies and policy leaders are looking to see how the new rules of power will play out.

Here's what was said:

• Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing President Trump "like a fiddle" days after a two-hour call ended with no ceasefire. Also, Shaheen, who worked with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on foreign assistance programs during his time in the Senate, said she "would like to see that Marco Rubio back."
• CIA deputy director Michael Ellis said the CIA needs to fix its tools and techniques, which date to the 1960s and '70s. "A lot of them need to be updated and refreshed to confront the technological challenges of today."
• Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Trump's "gold card" website, which allows people to buy U.S. permanent residency for $5 million, will launch within a week.
• Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said the tariffs haven't affected the company so far, but it's "really important to us that this gets worked out."
• U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said artificial intelligence can unlock "a ton of value" and help "transform the business side of the Army."
• Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) chair of the House select panel on China, said that country is "not a friendly nation," and America doesn't "want to completely decouple, but at the same time we need to be strategic and have our supply chains."

Content from the sponsored segments:

In View From the Top conversations, Exiger CEO Brandon Daniels said deep innovation and "scaling disruption" are the ways for the West to win the trade war.

• "It's actually turning innovation into a continuous part of the supply chain, because there has been a mediocrity in institutional scale," Daniels said. "Like China, [it has] these completely verticalized supply chains where literally there's a mill next to a forging facility, next to a components facility, next to an auto manufacturer – completely streamlined, completely effective. The only way to make it so that that becomes obsolesced is for us to actually just continually innovate at every level."