I'm John Batchler. Gregory Copley, Defense and Foreign Affairs, joins me. He's been traveling. He's in Europe.

And we're now looking at the parallel universe of trade. The trade is the story of the

Strait of Armouz to do with energy. Worldwide trade is slowed. I'm told the price of

containers have been climbing during a crisis.

Beyond that, there's the question of tariffs. And you will all recall that at the end of March, the plan was that the president would travel to Beijing, me with Xi Jinping, whatever

document had been prepared for them, they would acknowledge, these are the new tariffs, this is

the new way forward. We can

work together, not as adversaries, not as friends, but as trading partners. That was the expectation.

48 hours ago, the president suggested he might need to postpone his trip because of the war in Iran, the war in the Gulf.

That was made as a request to Beijing. As of right now, I can't be certain whether Beijing said,

okay or not. The president did say five or six weeks, which puts it into April. That's somewhere in that zone.

Now, what's important here is not just, is the president going, is there going to be a document?

Question is, what does China want? What is its position? Given that, China's economy is in terrible

shape. They lowered their expectations of 4.5 to 5.

We don't believe their numbers much anyway, but that's it.

They lowered their expectations.

The property market's not solved.

The consumer class will not step up and act according to the request of Beijing.

And the foreign trade is necessarily dented now by the war in the Middle East.

I said the price of containers have gone up. So what does China want? What does Trump want?

And this meeting going forward in five or six weeks? What does it mean for the Gulf?

For what we're witnessing now, given how dependent Asia is on Gulf oil.

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