Xi plays hard to get

US Senator Steve Daines went to Beijing on a mission to help unclog trade talks but left with a summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping looking a more distant prospect.

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Welcome to Balance of Power, bringing you the latest in global politics. If you haven't yet, sign up here. Senator Steve Daines came to Beijing as a self-styled envoy on a mission to help unclog trade talks. Even with the next wave of US tariffs looming, he left with a summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping looking a more distant prospect. The Montana Republican — a close ally of the US president — said after meeting with Communist Party officials yesterday that while a leaders' talk would happen "this year," tariff negotiations couldn't start until China "resolved" the illegal flow of fentanyl to the US. Trump last week said Xi could visit Washington in the "not-too-distant future." Daines, who played messenger during the first trade war, didn't explain how China should stop the drug smuggling Trump has cited as a chief cause for punitive levies. For its part, Beijing has already detailed the steps it's taken in a white paper, and said Washington owes it a "big thank you." Daines and Chinese Premier Li Qiang shake hands before a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing yesterday. Photographer: Ng Han Guan/Pool/AFP/Getty Images In another sign negotiations remained stalled ahead of Trump's announced April 2 tariffs, Xi didn't grant Daines an audience during his three-day trip — despite there being precedent. As the Chinese leader prepared to meet then-President Joe Biden in 2023, he sat down separately with a US senator and California governor. A better envoy for Trump might be Elon Musk, who knows Premier Li Qiang through his Tesla factory in Shanghai. But that connection has complicated the billionaire's position, with Trump flagging Musk's commercial ties as a potential stumbling block. "Elon has businesses in China and he would be susceptible," Trump said Friday, without elaborating, as he denied a report Musk was being shown Pentagon plans for a theoretical war with China. It all stands in contrast to Trump's first term, when it took just 10 weeks for China to announce Xi would fly to Mar-a-Lago for talks. Fast forward to 2025, and just getting the world's most-powerful men on the phone seems like it's going to take all year. That's not a good sign for global trade, nor for global stability. — Jenni Marsh Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Photographers: Jim Watson/Peter Klaunzer/AFP/Getty Images

Global Must Reads

US and Russian teams began negotiations in Saudi Arabia today following talks between American and Ukrainian officials yesterday, with White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz saying the focus is on a potential Black Sea maritime ceasefire. While the US is still hoping to achieve a broad truce within weeks, even as Russia increases strikes on Ukrainian cities, Moscow is signaling it's in no hurry for a deal. Turkey was bracing for more protests and market turmoil after Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was formally arrested and jailed on corruption charges yesterday, effectively removing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's main political rival from contention. Erdoğan is likely banking on the world needing him as a power broker more than it feels the need to join a fight over Turkey's democracy. WATCH: İmamoğlu's arrest has triggered market turmoil, with Turkish assets plunging, and protests across the country. Bloomberg's Beril Akman reports. Israel killed two members of Hamas' de-facto cabinet in the Gaza Strip yesterday, bringing to 11 the death toll within the 20-person forum during a renewed Israeli offensive. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet, meanwhile, took the first big step toward dismissing the Israeli attorney general in the latest attempt to reduce judicial oversight over the government's actions. Mark Carney began his election bid with a warning that Trump is serious about wanting to annex Canada, launching his effort to convince Canadians he can protect the country from US aggression. Carney, who was sworn in as prime minister on March 14, yesterday called a national election for April 28. Indonesian stocks extended a slump and the rupiah weakened as the government started transferring key state firms' ownership to a new sovereign wealth fund, fueling concerns about increasingly centralized economic decision making. Markets have been under pressure in recent weeks as concerns grow that President Prabowo Subianto's populist agenda and firmer grip on power may strain government finances and worsen the investment climate. A South Korean court has overturned Prime Minister Han Duck-soo's impeachment, reinstating him as the acting leader as the country waits for a separate verdict on President Yoon Suk Yeol's political fate. Rachel Reeves faces a tussle this week to avoid dissent from within her own party as Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer prepares to announce billions of pounds in spending cuts. Australia's finance minister warned in a Bloomberg TV interview that the new US administration's policies will have a "seismic" impact on the global economy, ahead of his national budget tomorrow. WATCH: Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers speaks with Bloomberg's Ben Westcott in Parliament House in Canberra. Austrian intelligence officers investigating a Bulgarian for alleged espionage have uncovered a Russian disinformation campaign aimed at damaging Ukraine.

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Chart of the Day

Keeping government borrowing costs in check has long been part of the US Treasury secretary's remit but Scott Bessent's fixation on 10-year bond yields is so intense that he's forced some on Wall Street to tear up their predictions for this year. In the past couple weeks, strategists at Barclays, Royal Bank of Canada and Société Générale have cut their year-end forecasts for 10-year yields in part, they said, because of Bessent's campaign to drive them down and keep them lower.

And Finally

A fast-spreading form of bird flu is devastating colonies where almost half the world's wandering albatrosses breed on islands midway between South Africa and Antarctica. Officials confirmed high pathogenicity avian influenza H5N1 virus on Marion Island, with about 150 of the 1,900 wandering albatross chicks born there last year killed, according to South Africa's environment department. Brown skuas, king penguins, giant petrels and sooty albatrosses have also been affected. An albatross flies over the Southern Ocean. Photographer: Patrick Herzog/AFP/Getty Images Thanks to the 38 people who answered the Friday quiz, and congratulations to Karol Bojnansky, who was first to correctly identify Istanbul as the city where the mayor was detained this week, sending the country's markets into freefall.

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