Good morning from the Financial Times.

Today is Tuesday, May 12th, and this is your FT News briefing.

All eyes are on this week's U.S. China summit, and prospects for peace in Iran are looking worse by the minute.

Plus, business in the Gulf was booming, but the war in the Middle East is forcing bankers to slow things down.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

The month-long ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is hanging by a thread, or as U.S. President Donald Trump puts it,

I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support where the doctor walks in and says,

sir, your loved one has approximately a 1% chance of living.

He spoke from the Oval Office yesterday after he rejected Tehran's counter-proposal to end the war.

After reading that piece of garbage, they sent us, I didn't even finish reading it.

They said, I'm not going to waste my time reading it.

Washington and Tehran have bounced peace deals back and forth since the temporary ceasefire came into effect in early April, but the two sides haven't been able to agree on what happens

to Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

The leaders of two global superpowers and geopolitical foes will sit down together later this week.

Donald Trump arrives in China tomorrow and he'll hold a summit with President Xi Jinping.

The two countries are locked in a bitter trade war.

So can they find common ground? Here to tell us more as the FT's

chief foreign affairs commentator, Gideon Rockman. Hey, Gideon. Hi. So give us some background about the

trade environment this meeting is happening in. Who has the upper hand heading into the talks?

Well, I think probably you'd have to say that China slightly has the edge, simply because they

responded to President Trump's very extreme tariffs of last year, which were up to 145% by

restricting the exports of critical minerals and rare earths, and that more or less forced America to

...