I'm John Bachelor, Gordon Chang, at Gordon-Gee-Chang, my colleague and co-hosts, and we're looking at the

quandary of the Straits of Hormuz and the Babel Mendeb, the two choke points that are now

part of the understanding that the world is in trouble for inflation, for shortages, for

famine. I underline famine. It will come up not as fast as the oil shortages, but it's there.

Urea's up 50 percent since the beginning of the war, fertilizes up 30 percent. What that

means is it cannot be afforded by people who plant for the least among us. I emphasize that. It'll come up again and again in

these coming weeks. Right now, however, we ask the question about China in the Gulf because of the

obvious contracts with Iran, but also because China is presenting itself as a world power. Where is it?

We welcome Steve Yates of the Heritage Foundation.

And I'm going to begin by asking Gordon to ask Steve a question

because I don't want to get bogged down in my unhappiness

about that fertilizer business.

Gordon, you have a question for Steve.

Steve, President Trump is supposed to meet Xi Jinping May 14th in the Chinese capital.

It seems that if we're talking about all of these issues with regard to China, they are all going to be discussed.

But is there a problem for China in the

sense that we have got so many disagreements that China cannot concentrate on what it really needs,

which is an end to the war, and how this all plays out? How do you see it? Well, Gordon, I see

this as coming together very, very differently than any other presidential level engagement I've ever seen in several respects.

In one way, there's a really bad American pattern of in advance of these kinds of meetings to really profoundly soft pedal things that might be uncomfortable for

the other side. And there's some echoes of things like that that a lot of friends have pointed

out in recent weeks. But just in recent days, the U.S. enforcing sanctions against Chinese

...