The meeting is all business as the two apex economic leaders are scheduled to meet on a summit that is majority framed around finance, trade, AI and economics.  At its core, this summit between President Trump and Chairman Xi is about economic power.

Within the power dynamic of these types of high-stakes meetings, positioning plays a critical role. Chairman Xi Jinping did not attend the arrival ceremony and the meeting between Trump and Xi will not take place until Thursday. Chinese Vice President Han Zheng greeted Trump at the Beijing airport. US Ambassador to China David Purdue and China’s Ambassador to the US Xie Feng were also there to welcome him.

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(Daily Mail) – […] The President’s Air Force One posse also included NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, who was scooped up on a refueling stop in Alaska, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Fox News host Sean Hannity and Rush Hour director Brett Ratner.

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There was much fake news about the tech and finance leaders traveling with President Trump to China.  Moments ago, President Trump corrects the record:

TRUTH SOCIAL – “CNBC incorrectly reported that the Great Jensen Huang, of Nvidia, was not invited to the incredible gathering of the World’s Greatest Businessmen/women proudly going to China. In actuality, Jensen is currently on Air Force One and, unless I ask him to leave, which is highly unlikely, CNBC’s reporting is incorrect or, as they say in politics, FAKE NEWS!

It is an Honor to have Jensen, Elon, Tim Apple, Larry Fink, Stephen Schwarzmann, Kelly Ortberg (Boeing), Brian Sikes (Cargill), Jane Fraser (Citi), Larry Culp (GE Aerospace), David Solomon (Goldman Sachs), Sanjay Mehrotra (Micron), Cristiano Amon (Qualcomm), and many others journeying to the Great Country of China where I will be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to “open up” China so that these brilliant people can work their magic, and help bring the People’s Republic to an even higher level! In fact, I promise, that when we are together, which will be in a matter of hours, I will make that my very first request. I have never seen or heard of any idea that would be more beneficial to our incredible Countries!”

~ President DONALD J. TRUMP

“Tim Apple” always cracks me up. lol

As previously noted and discussed by USTR Jamieson Greer, since the original trip to Beijing was announced several months ago, it was very easy to identify this visit was not a customary ‘state visit’ in the formal sense of the term.  Instead, this trip was always planned as a trade, finance and economic business trip specifically to engage Chairman Xi with a financial and investment focus.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss current geopolitical events and the ramifications for the U.S. economy.  It is a rather lengthy interview and discussion that touches on numerous key points.

Bessent notes the upcoming meeting between President Trump and Chairman Xi of China is still on schedule and U.S. Operation Financial Fury against Iran is yielding good results.  I had no idea the U.S. government has made $30 to $40 billion from the Intel backstop.  WATCH:

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlines Operation Economic Fury and the financial pressure campaign against the Iranian regime with Larry Kudlow.

KEY POINTS:

0:00 Introduction: Operation Economic Fury
0:39 Max Pressure: The Strategy to Freeze Iran’s Economy
2:04 Tracking the Money: Seizing IRGC Assets and Crypto
3:14 The Oil Blockade: Kharg Island at a Standstill
4:10 US Economic Resilience: Why Critics Are Wrong
6:04 IRS Modernization and Signature Tax Policies
7:33 Global Reshoring and the Manufacturing Boom
8:10 Geopolitical Chess: The UAE’s Break from OPEC
10:27 Federal Reserve Friction: Jay Powell vs. Kevin Warsh

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The Federal Reserve is reported to be historically apolitical, meaning all considerations are absent of politics.  However, no individual Federal Reserve Chairman has been more overtly political than Jerome Powell.

Today, after announcing yet again the Fed will not lower interest rates, Chairman Jerome Powell announced he will not leave the board of the federal reserve even after his term has expired and he is replaced by recently advanced Kevin Warsh.  Powell said he plans to maintain a “low profile” as a governor, but it will be the first time since 1948 that a Federal Reserve Chairman has stayed on the board at the end of their chairmanship.

The Inspector General is currently reviewing the massive cost overrun for a new multi-billion-dollar Federal Reserve building that has been the heart of controversy since the initial $1 billion overrun was announced. “I’ve said that I will not leave the board until this investigation is well and truly over with transparency and finality, and I stand by that,” Powell said.

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Today is not a good day for the Canadian trade team.

It started with Quebec’s new Premier in Washington DC meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer {citation} in order to talk trade {SEE TIMELINE} saying on Twitter, “Quebec wants a renewal of the [USMCA] to ensure a stable and predictable framework for our economic exchanges.” However, Mrs. Christine Fréchette (pictured left) then bragged about having strategic discussions with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. {citation}

For those who might not know, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a parasitic Wall Street and K-Street lobbying organization that has been locked out of trade influence since President Trump took office in 2017.  It was the U.S. CoC who sold out our manufacturing base, paid-off prior administrations and wrote the actual trade language in almost every trade deal that destroyed U.S. manufacturing.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a lobbying organization who focuses on the bottom-line profits of U.S. multinational corporations, and they don’t care what happens domestically to American jobs, American manufacturing and American wages.  The CoC is the organization who created the rust belt and destroyed our manufacturing base under the guise of promoting a “service driven economy.”

If Canada want’s a successful trade negotiation with the USA, the Chamber of Commerce is the last organization they should be strategizing with.

Then comes Prime Minister Mark Carney who not only steps on a rake, but he also publicly insults President Trump and the entire U.S. trade team by saying every country in the world privately tells him they regret making a trade agreement with President Trump. ¹{Citation at 28:10 of Video}

I’m going to post the entire video of Prime Minister Mark Carney discussing USMCA (Canada calls CUSMA) trade negotiations because the tone deafness of it is off the charts. That includes the Canadian Prime Minister saying that Section 232 national security reviews are a violation of the U.S-Canada trade agreement.  Carney believes any independent U.S. trade position that negates trade with any Canadian sector is a violation of trade rules, yet he is afraid to sue over Sec 232 because he doesn’t want to discover the flaw in his mindset.

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When Jeanine Pirro says “compound” she isn’t kidding. [Check the Images] The DOJ took down a massive financial fraud operation in southeast Asia that was targeting Americans.

DOJ – “The Department of Justice, through U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro and Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Criminal Division, together with its partners, today announced a series of coordinated actions by the Scam Center Strike Force against Southeast Asian criminal organizations operating scam centers that have defrauded Americans of billions of dollars.  

The Scam Center Strike Force’s actions include criminal charges against two Chinese nationals who managed a cryptocurrency investment fraud compound in Burma and attempted to open another compound in Cambodia, the seizure of a Telegram messaging app channel used to recruit human trafficking victims to a scam compound in Cambodia in order to work a law enforcement impersonation scam, and the seizure of 503 fake invesment websites, among other actions.” (more)

…”the scam workers specifically targeted U.S. persons. In the fraud scheme, victims received cold calls from individuals posing as bank representatives, including impersonators of JPMorgan or other U.S. bank customer service agents, warning them that their bank accounts had been used to purchase firearms from an actual U.S. gun store website. Victims were then transferred to individuals posing as “NYPD detectives” or other supposed law enforcement, and later sent to the “New York Supreme Court” or other purported prosecutorial officials. Through sustained pressure conducted over WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams, victims were induced to disclose their bank account information and ultimately transfer their savings to the scammers.” (source)

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A generally good big-picture overview here from the folks at Promethean PAC.

“In this midweek update, Susan Kokinda argues that Kevin Warsh’s Senate Banking Committee testimony—calling for “regime change” at the Federal Reserve and blaming inflation on excessive money creation—signals a broader shift aligned with the Trump administration against what she describes as an Imperial, British-led free-trade order.

Kokinda highlights Warsh’s criticism of post-2008 quantitative easing as benefiting financial asset holders while many Americans own no assets, and contrasts this with Democrats’ focus on divestment issues. Kokinda ties Warsh’s stance to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s emphasis on raising living standards over bailing out markets and to Trump’s comments on Fed independence. She then points to Trump’s April 20 Defense Production Act action citing market failures in energy infrastructure, including transformer shortages, as national-security threats, linking this to energy independence and Iran, and contrasts it with Mark Carney’s globalist posture and references to the War of 1812.”

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A generally good summary into some of the financial issues happening in the background of the dire Straits of Hormuz.

Susan Kokinda highlights UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer declining to join an American blockade and claims Britain has lost control of the choke point. She details financial actions targeting Iranian money flows, including UAE arrests of IRGC-linked money changers, Treasury Secretary Bessent using Patriot Act Section 311 against a Zurich bank, and scrutiny of London-based crypto exchanges and Santander UK. She cites a UK military chief admitting Britain’s war planning has lapsed since the Cold War and links fuel disruptions and protests to the conflict, concluding Trump has forced a hidden imperial system into the open.  WATCH:

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ActBlue is to the Democrat party fundraising machine as WinRed is to the Republican side of the equation.

In a rather stunning outline by the New York Times [SEE HERE] the progressive outlet is reporting of serious concerns within the leadership of ActBlue related to their willfully blind reception of foreign sources of money to fund Democrat candidates.

The remarkable aspect is not just that ActBlue takes foreign funds, but rather the New York Times revealing internal legal discussions about it.  According to the Times reporting, the Eric Holder law firm Covington & Burling, the primary legal mechanism for the ActBlue/DNC machinery, lies at the heart of the matter.

(NYT) […] The firm concluded that ActBlue’s chief executive had given a potentially misleading response to congressional Republican investigators in a 2023 letter explaining how the organization vetted donations to ensure that they were not illegally coming from foreign citizens.

The letter from the chief executive, Regina Wallace-Jones, said ActBlue carried out “multilayered” screenings of contributions that helped “root out” those from overseas. In fact, the law firm found, some of the steps she had described were not always followed.

“This presents a substantial risk for ActBlue,” the law firm, Covington & Burling, wrote in one of two memos expressing legal concerns. One memo raised the specter of a criminal investigation if prosecutors believed that ActBlue had tried to conceal facts about its efforts to prevent foreign contributions. (source)

To really appreciate the scheme that seems to be outlined by the internal documents, it is worth remembering that James O’Keefe previously did some boots on the ground research into ActBlue [SEE HERE – 2023] and found that multiple, perhaps thousands, of “donor” names and addresses were assigned to contributions the donors said they never made.

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