Some close advisers to President Trump fear the biggest substantive result of the China summit is heightened danger that Chinese President Xi Jinping will invade Taiwan in the next five years, potentially choking off the chips used to power AI to U.S. companies.
What they're saying: Trump loved the pageantry and the special access Xi shrewdly rolled out during the Beijing visit. But the words didn't match the bonhomie. One Trump adviser told us Xi is "trying to move China to a new position where he's saying: 'We're not a rising power. We're your equal. And Taiwan is mine.'"
Farmers across the Midwest are entering planting season under mounting financial pressure, as the Iran conflict drives up diesel and fertilizer prices — deepening an agricultural downturn that some say is the worst since the crisis of the 1980s.
Why it matters: Rising fuel and fertilizer costs threaten to push more family farms out of business, drive up food prices and further strain rural economies already battered by trade disruptions, inflation and extreme weather.
