Chatham House: Trump–Xi summit will be about managing US–China rivalry, not resolving it

Posted on May 15, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

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Trump–Xi summit will be about managing US–China rivalry, not resolving it

The summit’s short agenda reveals a preference for continuing stability, which buys time. The question is how each side will use it.

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Published 13 May 2026 —4 minute READ

Image — Chinese youth hold American and Chinese flags as they join officials to welcome US President Donald Trump at Beijing Capital International Airport on 13 May 2026 in Beijing, China. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

Max Yoeli

Senior Research Fellow, US and North America Programme

When US President Trump and China’s President Xi meet in Beijing this week, the US list of concrete deliverables is short: keep rare earths flowing, create a board of trade mechanism for non-sensitive sectors, and secure Chinese purchase commitments. The gap between this short agenda and the long list of issues between two nations engaged in grinding, multidimensional competition reveals a shared preference for managing their rivalry rather than resolving it. But while Xi pursues this relationship management as strategy, Trump takes a more transactional and improvisational approach. With three more Trump-Xi meetings expected this year – at APEC in Shenzhen, the G20 in Miami and a Xi state visit – the question now is how each side will use this continued stalemate.

— Laurel Rapp and Max Yoeli discuss the coming summit from the US perspective.

Trump brings a commercial focus to Beijing and will be accompanied by a CEO delegation, reflecting a turn away from focusing on more structural issues. Among his aims are Chinese purchases of American products like soybeans, LNG and Boeing aircraft. While such purchases, even if fulfilled, are unlikely to compensate for the damage to US businesses from the 2025 trade war, the optics are helpful for a politically vulnerable administration.

Xi also brings economic concerns – especially with further US tariffs pending – and will push on technology access. He has also signalled that Taiwan tops his agenda. China has long criticized US military support for Taiwan, which Beijing considers Chinese territory. The Trump administration approved an $11 billion arms package for Taiwan in December but has not yet followed through with delivery – even after Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan approved a special defence budget last week. On Monday, Trump indicated he would discuss the package with Xi, casting doubt on longstanding US policy regarding Taiwan.

The brief agenda spans only a fraction of the US–China relationship. On AI, officials seek to establish a communication channel rather than address underlying competition. On China’s nuclear build-up, Beijing has shown little appetite to engage. Although communication beats silence, such underwhelming efforts sidestep structural dynamics. Other issues like the South China Sea, industrial overcapacity and currency issues are marginal or absent. While the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed Iran up the agenda, the focus will be on immediate resolution levers rather than underlying Chinese support for Iran, Russia and North Korea.

Washington’s narrow focus is itself revealing. It partly reflects the Trump administration’s transactional, short-term approach. More significantly, the 2025 trade war and Chinese rare earth export controls reoriented leverage and exposed vulnerabilities – even more acute given depleted US munitions stocks amid the Iran war.

Going into the summit, both leaders face domestic constraints. Trump is navigating affordability politics, inflation, an unpopular war and setbacks to his trade agenda, with his approval rating at second-term lows. Agricultural communities, core to his support, have lost export markets and face rising fertilizer prices. For Trump, the pressure is on ahead of November’s midterm elections when his Republican party must defend Congressional majorities. He is also on the clock to resolve the Iran war.

Xi, meanwhile, faces debt, deflation, demographic headwinds and softening global demand. China’s latest economic growth target is its lowest since 1991, even as pre-war stockpiles and diversified imports help buffer Iran shocks. But Beijing operates on a longer timeline; Xi answers to party elites and the focus is on stability.

An asymmetric stalemate

The US and China have taken very different approaches to managing their economic rivalry. As the two leaders seek continuing stability to buy time, how they use it is telling.

China has spent the past decade – especially since Trump’s first term – building its economic statecraft architecture, including export controls, the unreliable entity list, the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, and rare earth export licensing. China’s October 2025 rare earth export controls showed a willingness to use its dominance over rare earth supply chains as leverage. Although these measures were largely suspended by the so-called ‘Busan truce’, earlier April 2025 controls on permanent magnets and heavy rare earths remain in place. Beijing’s recent order directing companies not to comply with US sanctions against five refineries, accused of importing Iranian oil, also points to China’s growing assertiveness. Related workTrump’s treatment of US allies has weakened his negotiating position with Xi

Cohesive strategy and patient investment have strengthened China’s hand in other critical domains too. China installed more solar capacity in 2024 than the rest of the world combined and dominates battery and EV supply chains. It is also accelerating frontier technology progress and increasingly pushing towards indigenization – even after Washington opened a door by giving the green light for Nvidia H200 chip sales.

But there are gaps, notably advanced lithography, the machinery required to produce cutting-edge semiconductors. And China’s foundations are not unshakeable: fixed-asset investment struggled in 2025, the property sector continues to drag, and industrial policy draws mounting external backlash.

The US picture is more mixed. Trump administration policy is an uneven companion to private sector innovation – and often a hindrance. In areas with bipartisan support, consistent policy and strategic coherence can deliver progress. Continued export control coordination with the Netherlands and Japan on lithography is one example; efforts to develop alternatives to China’s critical minerals dominance are another, though they will take years to fully realize.

In other areas, progress is hampered by policy improvisation: the back-and-forth on tariffs, curtailed deployment of renewables, damaged research and state capacity, narrowing talent pathways, and a pattern of White House policy reversals. The US economy has nonetheless proven resilient, drawing on deep inherited advantages, such as AI infrastructure investment, energy abundance, deep capital markets, and innovation ecosystems. But tailwinds alone are insufficient. Without more coherent policy, including an industrial policy doctrine, gaps will emerge and grow.

Evaluating summit outcomes

For trade partners looking ahead, little will change. Hedging and trade diversification remain prudent policy. More broadly, evaluating the summit’s outcomes demands looking past immediate headlines and statements to the data and execution that follow. What commitments are made on the economic side – and whether they are fulfilled – are particularly important and will set the stage for future meetings.

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While the expectation is for no drastic changes, three unlikely scenarios are worth considering. The first is dramatic change in the Middle East, whether a ceasefire, Hormuz reopening or resumed bombing. The second is a bilateral blowup, although an impulsive response by the Trump administration that strains the Busan truce would face domestic backlash. Third is a small but real risk that Trump offers an unexpected accommodation – including on Taiwan language or technology controls – in exchange for economic and commercial benefits.

A summit where pomp and ceremony meets policy continuation is more likely and will allow for a collective exhale. Stability buys both nations more time. The more pointed question is what each does with it. Forget the hackneyed notion that China thinks in centuries. Against a US system that operates in news cycles and swings between elections, even modest long-term discipline is advantageous. And Beijing is using this time to build. If Washington fails to match this effort with greater policy coherence and execution it will enter the next three Trump–Xi meetings in a weaker position.

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The Harvard Gazette: Is napping a sign of a deeper health problem?

Posted on May 15, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

Health

Is napping a sign of a deeper health problem?

Anna Lamb

Harvard Staff Writer

May 13, 2026 5 min read

New study finds link between certain sleep patterns and higher mortality in older adults

If Grandpa occasionally dozes off in front of the TV or squeezes in a power nap after lunch, it’s probably no big deal. But if he can’t keep his eyes open at the breakfast table, even after a full night of sleep, that could be a red flag, according to researchers at Mass General Brigham.

In a new study published in partnership with Rush University Medical Center, excessive napping by older adults is linked with higher mortality rates, signaling a possible connection to underlying disease.

“We know that older people tend to nap a lot. And we do a lot of work on age-related diseases, so we were thinking napping could predict mortality in older adults,” said Chenlu Gao, a researcher in the MGB Department of Anesthesiology, and lead author of the study. Gao is also a research fellow in the division of sleep and circadian disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“We had this great opportunity to collaborate with the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, who have a comprehensive data set,” said Gao. “Using this data set, we found that there is a connection between daytime napping and mortality in older adults.”

The Rush Memory and Aging Project, which began in 1997 as a cohort study looking at the cognition and neurodegeneration of older adults in northern Illinois, proved invaluable to Gao’s research. In 2005, the Rush project began having participants wear wrist monitors for 10 days to measure rest-activity data — allowing researchers to extract extensive information on nap length, frequency, timing, and day-to-day variability.

Chenlu Gao.Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer

“What is great about this study is that it objectively measured daytime napping patterns, not just via self-report,” Gao said.

At baseline, there was little connection between mortality and subjects who napped within or below the “average” amount for their age group — just under an hour for participants in this study whose ages fell mostly in the early 80s range.

“Short naps, or within one hour per day of napping, are most likely benign or not associated with additional risks,” Gao said. “Our participants, on average, nap about 50 minutes per day, and they take on average about two naps per day.”

“Short naps, or within one hour per day of napping, are most likely benign or not associated with additional risks.”Chenlu Gao

By 2025, researchers had access to as much as 19 years’ worth of follow-up statistics from 1,338 total participants — all in retirement and older than 56. They found that both longer and more frequent naps were associated with higher mortality in the age group observed. Notably, each additional hour of daytime napping per day was associated with a roughly 13 percent higher mortality risk while each extra nap per day was associated with a 7 percent higher mortality risk.

Gao wants to make one thing clear: These findings do not suggest that the naps cause poor outcomes, but rather that they may serve as a warning sign for underlying disease.

“We think naps are more like a reflection of health conditions,” she said. “If you think about when you get the flu, you tend to be very tired during the day. Maybe you take several naps, but you also have other visible symptoms, so you know the nap is because of the flu. For some older adults who nap a lot during the day, their conditions may not have those very visible symptoms, so they don’t know they have the conditions causing them to feel really tired.”

And while the study is limited in determining a causal relationship between napping and health, Gao said there could be other factors that explain the associations between the two.

“I would imagine that those who are socially more active and also physically more active tend to be less depressed, less anxious, would be napping less,” said Ruixue Cai, another researcher at the MGB Department of Anesthesiology and the second author of the paper. “And just anecdotally, when we talk to older adult participants in our other studies, a lot of them say that they were really lonely and bored during the day because they’re retired, and so they would go take a nap.”

The data revealed another red flag to researchers — napping in the morning.

“Because for a healthy person, after a night of sleep, they should feel pretty refreshed and able to stay awake in the morning hours, but for people who are not so healthy, they may struggle with sleepiness even in the morning hours,” Cai said.

According to the study, morning nappers had a 30 percent higher mortality risk compared to those who nap in the early afternoon.

However, the occasional napper — regardless of age — should not be alarmed when they feel like getting some quick shut-eye, Gao said.

“I think those are fine,” she said. “We usually suggest limiting the naps to 20 minutes, and finish before 2 or 3 p.m., just so it doesn’t affect nighttime sleep.”

Gao emphasized this new data is no substitute for clinical advice.

“There are studies that try to implement long-term nap interventions to see if that will influence health. This is a really good future direction,” she said. “Findings from these studies would tell us how long-term nap habits influence health and inform clinical nap guidelines, beyond our current findings.”

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Fortune: North Korean operatives stole $2 billion last year—and financial firms are the next target

Posted on May 15, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

Cybersecurity fraud

North Korean operatives stole $2 billion last year—and financial firms are the next target

Amanda Gerut

News Editor, West Coast

May 14, 2026, 8:00 AM ET

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Man with glasses and beard before a microphone

Adam Meyers, senior vice president of counter adversary operations, CrowdStrikePhoto by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

North Korea’s army of cyber operatives stole a record $2 billion in digital assets last year, fueled by the largest financial theft ever reported—$1.46 billion stolen in a single operation from crypto exchange Bybit.

And the DPRK’s tried-and-true scheme involving North Korean IT workers pretending to be American job seekers doubled the volume of its attacks in 2025, according to CrowdStrike, making it the most active North Korea-linked form of attack the firm tracks. The IT worker operation, in which thousands of North Korean men trained in software development are stationed in China, Russia, and other locations, functions by using American identities to land remote tech jobs at American and European companies.

The scheme has been so successful, law enforcement has created a joint FBI-National Security Division task force to disrupt the operations and have dealt a series of harsh prison terms to American accomplices who have willingly aided the North Koreans.

A Nashville laptop farm and New York recruiting front

Generally, the IT workers running the employment scam fabricate résumés and software development profiles using stolen identities to appear legitimate—or they recruit American accomplices to rent out their names to the workers in exchange for quick cash and sometimes a recurring cut of the proceeds. The IT workers take their salary, often earned doing real work, and then send most of the money back to the DPRK where authoritarian ruler Kim Jong-Un uses it to fund the country’s nuclear weapons program. In some cases, the IT operatives share intelligence with the DPRK’s malicious hacking army to help steal data or organize additional theft.

This month, two American men were sentenced to 18 months in federal prison each for operating “laptop farms” and helping North Korean IT workers get remote jobs at nearly 70 American companies in separate schemes that generated more than $1.2 million for the DPRK. The term laptop farm refers to the setups the accomplices create after fraudulently accepting laptops from companies and installing software and remote desktop applications to shield the IT workers identities’ and help funnel their salaries.

Matthew Isaac Knoot ran a laptop farm out of his Nashville home between July 2022 and August 2023, court records show, and helped the North Korean scheme with jobs at four companies that paid more than $250,000 for IT work. Most of the money was reported to the IRS and Social Security Administration in the name of a real person whose identity was stolen. Knoot helped transfer the salary to accounts outside the U.S. and into accounts associated with North Korean and Chinese operatives, the DOJ said.

In addition to 18 months in prison, Knoot was ordered to pay $15,100 in restitution to victim companies and forfeit another $15,100, which is what the DPRK IT workers paid him for his help in the scheme.

A New York man, Erick Ntekereze Prince, was also sentenced to 18 months for laptop farming. Prince pleaded guilty to wire-fraud conspiracy and was ordered to forfeit the $89,000 DPRK IT workers paid him. According to authorities, Prince worked in the scheme from June 2020 through August 2024 and used his recruiting firm, Taggcar Inc., to direct “certified” IT workers to U.S. companies. He also kept U.S. company laptops at his New York home and installed remote access software so the IT workers could appear as though they worked from his residence.

The DOJ said Prince was part of a scheme that, in total, obtained work from 64 U.S. companies that paid more than $943,069 in salary payments. Four others were charged in the scheme, including Emanuel Ashtor and Pedro Ernesto Alonso de los Reyes. Ashtor awaits trial and de los Reyes is in custody in The Netherlands, authorities said. Two others charged, Jin Sung-il and Pak Jin-Song, are North Korean and remain at large. Ashtor’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment and de los Reyes could not be reached.

The Knoot and Prince sentencings bring the total number of Americans sent to prison for working as accomplices to at least nine since last year.

‘Golden unicorns’

Adam Meyers, senior vice president of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, said last year he investigated about one DPRK-related attack a day, and this year it’s closer to two. In the month of March 2025, CrowdStrike identified 33 insider threat operations linked to Famous Chollima, CrowdStrike’s term for the North Korean IT worker scheme. In March 2026, Meyers said CrowdStrike identified 45 operations.

The IT workers strike opportunistically, said Meyers, so if there’s a job opening posted online, they’ll just go for it with the goal of getting as many jobs as possible. He described the operation as “high tempo, low sophistication.” However, the DPRK operatives have become highly skilled at appearing to recruiters as “golden unicorn” job applicants that are irresistible to hiring teams, he added.

“Their job is to make revenue for the weapons program of North Korea,” said Meyers. “So they are going to do whatever they can in terms of finding jobs.”

The UN has pegged the DPRK’s IT worker revenue generation at $250 million to $600 million per year. The UN’s Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Committee, which tracks DPRK sanctions violations and evasion tactics, revealed at its latest meeting in January that the scheme has now victimized 40 countries around the globe.

The DPRK threat is compounded by the fact that traditional financial institutions, an increasingly prevalent target, have pushed further into digital asset services and crypto in recent years, an area North Korean operatives have deep experience working to exploit.

In the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, a North Korea-linked group that CrowdStrike calls “Stardust Chollima,” tripled the pace of its attacks, targeting at least 21 crypto and fintech firms across North America, Europe, and Asia in a single two-month period.

That scheme involved operatives impersonating recruiters and executive search consultants on LinkedIn and Telegram and then sending unwitting job-seeking targets standard technical coding tests laced with malware.

The attackers used AI to generate fabricated people and video-conference environments by using images and videos of real executives and offices to make job seekers believe the sham interviews, CrowdStrike found.

The hard way

Meyers said traditional financial institutions should absorb the “hard lessons” the crypto industry has taken in—sometimes at enormous cost.

“They need to make sure they follow best practices in terms of things like having cold storage versus hot storage,” Meyers said, referring to security protocols for offline digital assets versus connected wallets. “Making sure that you have multi-factor authentication, making sure that you have multiple control factors in place in terms of authorizing transfers” and steadfast defensive measures will help guard financial institutions.

CrowdStrike’s report assessed that the DPRK cyber operations targeting consumer banks and other financial services firms will intensify through 2026, driven by international sanctions and the need to fund North Korea’s military and weapons programs.

Meyers said protecting against the intrusions is a constant battle and as companies tighten their defenses, operatives will shift tactics. And then the cycle begins again.

“It’s a constant battle to stop them from being successful,” said Meyers. “Companies really need to look at those lessons learned and make sure they’ve learned them—before they learn them the hard way.”

In 2001, Fortune first convened the smartest people we know, bringing together CEOs and founders, builders and investors, thinkers and doers. Since then, Fortune Brainstorm Tech has been the place where bold ideas collide. From June 8–10, we will return to Aspen—where it all began—to mark 25 years of Brainstorm. Register now.

About the Author

By Amanda GerutNews Editor, West Coast

Amanda Gerut is the west coast editor at Fortune, overseeing publicly traded businesses, executive compensation, Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, and investigations.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cyber-security, cybersecurity, north-korea, security, technology | Leave a comment

The Conversation UK: The opening headlines from the summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing signal an openness on the Chinese side towards stabilising relations with the US. In his opening remarks, the Chinese president noted that China and the US “should be partners not rivals”. But he warned Trump that a crisis over Taiwan could lead to “clashes and even conflicts”.

Posted on May 15, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

Academic rigour, journalistic flair

The opening headlines from the summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing signal an openness on the Chinese side towards stabilising relations with the US. In his opening remarks, the Chinese president noted that China and the US “should be partners not rivals”. But he warned Trump that a crisis over Taiwan could lead to “clashes and even conflicts”.

With Xi also indicating that there will be more opportunities for US companies to do business in China, the stage is set for a relatively successful summit. Both sides can claim it as a success because it offers some concrete benefits in the form of a trade war avoided and at least the prospect of cooperation on global issues such as the Iran war. It also sets a generally more positive tone for relations between the two countries.

Such an outcome is particularly troubling for Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, who will see his relevance and leverage diminished by more stable and predictable US-China relations. Putin’s aspirations to position Russia as a great power depend on Moscow either being strategically useful to Washington and Beijing, or gaining leverage with them by demonstrating a capacity to be disruptive.

However, on both counts, Putin’s hand has been substantially weakened. His war against Ukraine is no longer a priority issue for the US, with the two main American interlocutors in peace talks, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, focused on negotiations with Iran.

Putin’s latest phone call with Trump on April 29 will have been disappointing for the Russian leader. His offer to take Iran’s highly enriched uranium to Russia was reportedly rebuffed by Trump, who told him to focus on “ending the war with Ukraine”. And days later the Kremlin was forced to scale back its annual military parade in Moscow, due to concerns that it could be targeted by Ukrainian forces.

On the Chinese side, things are possibly even more troubling. The last face-to-face meeting between Xi and Putin took place in September 2025. They have only held one video conference since then. A Kremlin statement during the Trump-Xi summit that Putin will visit China soon smacks more of desperation than confirmation.

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Xi Jinping greets Donald Trump at a welcome ceremony in Beijing. — Xi Jinping greets Donald Trump at a welcome ceremony in Beijing, China, on May 14. Maxim Shemetov / EPA

Putin’s leverage

While Putin appears sidelined in the US-China relationship, he is not without cards of his own. Major global issues – including wars in Ukraine and Iran, energy security and the future of the international order – are still connected to Russia. This provides Putin with a degree of leverage in his relations with both Xi and Trump.

But exercising this leverage comes with significant risks, especially in areas where Chinese and US interests are more aligned with each other than with Russia. Take the case of the Iran war as an example.

Russia benefits most from this conflict continuing.

While Russian support is unlikely to enable Iran to win the war, it will give the regime in Tehran more time to avoid defeat and increase the costs for the US, its regional allies and the global economy. This is not going to play well with Trump, who is under mounting domestic pressure to wind down the war in Iran.

Beijing has offered Iran some support throughout the war, for example by helping it bypass western sanctions on the export of its oil. But there are clear limits to how far China will go. For China, its relationship with the US is far more important than the one with Iran. This tilts the balance of preferences in Beijing towards an end of the conflict rather than towards its continuation.

This does not mean that China and the US will now align against Russia. Relations between Russia and China are longstanding and deep across a range of issues. Their “no-limits partnership” may be increasingly asymmetric, but there is still a great deal of anti-American and anti-western alignment between them.

The US under Trump is also more ambivalent about its stance on Russia than under previous administrations. Trump’s transactional foreign policy – and his urge to make deals rather than pursue a consistent strategy – is something Russia will continue to try to leverage to its own advantage.

Ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov released a statement in which he said “the path to the implementation of a whole range of economic projects will be open” if the White House agrees to decouple trade from the war in Ukraine. This indicates that Moscow is fully aware of this opportunity – as well as the challenge to offer the US something China cannot.

The Xi-Trump summit is a party to which Putin was not invited. The fact that the US and China seem to be heading towards a period of better-managed relations indicates that his efforts to make his presence felt have largely failed. This does not bode well for his aspirations to restore Russia to its Soviet-era status as a great power – but it does not imply that he will give up.

Author

Stefan Wolff Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

Disclosure statement

Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

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Axios: Catch me up

Posted on May 15, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

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Joe Rogan Podcast News: Obama on Iran. “We pulled it off without firing a missile. We got 97% of their enriched uranium out….”

Posted on May 15, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

Obama on Iran: "We pulled it off without firing a missile. We got 97% of their enriched uranium out. There’s no dispute that it worked and we didn’t have to kill a whole bunch of people or shut down the Strait of Hormuz."pic.twitter.com/eNlogMZAee
— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) May 14, 2026

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Mario Nawfal on X: Cuba has officially run out of fuel. Not “running low.” Zero. 20+ hours of daily blackouts, the protests breaking out. Venezuela and Mexico cut off shipments after Trump threatened tariffs on anyone supplying the island. One energy minister confirmed it plainly: “The country has no fuel and that’s no lie. Our economy has hit rock bottom.” This is what maximum pressure actually looks like up close. Now this is a blockade, not what the regime told for decades. Source: Reuters

Posted on May 15, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

Mario Nawfal

@MarioNawfal

Cuba has officially run out of fuel. Not “running low.” Zero. 20+ hours of daily blackouts, the protests breaking out. Venezuela and Mexico cut off shipments after Trump threatened tariffs on anyone supplying the island. One energy minister confirmed it plainly: “The country has no fuel and that’s no lie. Our economy has hit rock bottom.” This is what maximum pressure actually looks like up close. Now this is a blockade, not what the regime told for decades. Source: Reuters

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Forbes: Who is the richest? Who makes least donations to charities?

Posted on May 15, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

@Forbes

Elon Musk is the planet’s richest person by far, worth $839 billion as of Forbes’ annual World’s Billionaires list. He also ranks among the least philanthropic billionaires. Sure, Musk has transferred $8.5 billion of Tesla stock to his charitable foundations (1% of his net worth)—but nearly all of it is still sitting there idle. Only an estimated $500 million, or 0.06% of Musk’s vast fortune, has ever been disbursed to those in need.

His lack of giving raises a question: What would our billionaires ranking look like if the world’s most generous people had never donated a dollar to charity? https://forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2026/04/20/reranking-the-worlds-billionaires-by-wealth–and-altruism/?utm_campaign=ForbesMainTwitter&utm_source=ForbesMainTwitter&utm_medium=social

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Reuters: Trump touts business wins as China airs Iran, Taiwan concerns

Posted on May 15, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

Trump touts business wins as China airs Iran, Taiwan concerns

By Trevor Hunnicutt and Liz Lee

May 14, 202611:02 PM GMT+1Updated 28 mins ago

Item 1 of 7 U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a friendship walk through Zhongnanhai Garden with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, China, May 15, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci/Pool

[1/7]U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a friendship walk through Zhongnanhai Garden with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, China, May 15, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci/Pool Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary
Companies

Xi warns that mishandling Taiwan issue could lead to conflict
Iran war ‘should have never happened’, Beijing says
Leaders meet for tea and lunch on last day of summit
Boeing shares slump after orders missed expectations
U.S. officials tout deals on farm goods, beef and energy

BEIJING, May 15 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump entered his final talks with Xi Jinping on Friday touting economic wins that gave markets little to cheer, while Beijing warned Washington about mishandling Taiwan and said its war with Iran should never have started.

Trump is making the first visit by a U.S. president to China, America’s main ‌strategic and economic rival, since his last in 2017, and has been seeking tangible results to beef up his dented approval ratings ahead of crucial midterm elections.

The Reuters Iran Briefing newsletter keeps you informed with the latest developments and analysis of the Iran war. Sign up here.

“We’ve made some fantastic trade deals, great for both countries,” Trump said, seated beside Xi in a decorative red armchair at the opulent Zhongnanhai complex, a former imperial garden that houses the offices of Chinese leaders.

Earlier, they had chatted and strolled outside, with Trump remarking about the beautiful roses and Xi promising to send him seeds for the flowers, before a lunch of lobster balls, Kung Pao scallops and shrimp dumplings.

But as Trump prepared for his final meeting, China’s foreign ministry issued a blunt statement outlining its frustration with the Iran war.

“This conflict, which should never have happened, has no reason to continue,” the ministry said, adding that China was supporting efforts to reach a peace deal in a war that ⁠had severely affected energy supplies and the global economy.

At Zhongnanhai, Trump said the leaders had discussed Iran and felt “very similar”, though Xi did not comment.

Trump had been expected to urge China to convince Iran to make a deal with Washington to end a war that has pushed up prices and made him politically vulnerable at home.

But analysts doubt Xi will be willing to push Tehran hard or end support for its military, given Iran’s value to Beijing as a strategic counterweight to the US.

A brief U.S. summary of Thursday’s talks highlighted what the White House called the leaders’ shared desire to reopen the Strait of Hormuz off Iran and Xi’s apparent interest in American oil purchases to pare China’s dependence on Middle East supply.

A fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas travel through the Strait in normal times.

BOEING SHARES SLIDE ON UNDERWHELMING DEAL

U.S. officials said they had also agreed deals to sell farm goods, beef and energy to China, with progress on setting up mechanisms to manage future trade, and both sides expected to identify $30 billion of non-sensitive goods.They’re gonna do a lot00:0300:40

There were scant details of the deals, however, and no signs of a breakthrough on selling Nvidia’s (NVDA.O), opens new tab advanced H200 AI chips to China, despite CEO Jensen Huang’s dramatic last-minute addition to the trip.

Trump told Fox News that China had agreed to order 200 Boeing BA.N jets, its first purchase of U.S.-made commercial jets in nearly a decade, but that was far short of ‌the roughly 500 ⁠markets had expected, and Boeing shares fell more than 4%.

“For the market, the summit can be strategically reassuring while underwhelming in substance,” said Chim Lee, senior China analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The main achievement of the summit may be maintaining a fragile trade truce struck when the leaders last met in October and Trump suspended triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods while Xi backed away from choking off supplies of vital rare earths.

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Axiom: Golden age of swiping

Posted on May 15, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

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Chatham House: Trump–Xi summit will be about managing US–China rivalry, not resolving it

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Trump–Xi summit will be about managing US–China rivalry, not resolving it

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An asymmetric stalemate

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BOEING SHARES SLIDE ON UNDERWHELMING DEAL

Axiom: Golden age of swiping

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