Crypto News: Trump and the CEOs go to China

President Donald Trump has arrived in China, and the real work on his summit with President Xi Jinping will start Thursday. In a new World Stage column, Bloomberg Businessweek editor at large Wes Kosova writes about what each brings to the table. You can read an excerpt below and the whole column here (free!). Plus: What Silicon Valley’s congressman says about AI, how underseas cables are getting wrapped up in the Iran war and why there’s more time in the day than you think.

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In the weeks leading up to Thursday’s long-awaited meeting between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, the Chinese and US presidents have been working hard to improve their negotiating positions on trade, tech, Taiwan, Iran and other pressing issues on the table. But the two leaders appear to have very different ideas about how to create the leverage they need to get the results they want.

The voluble American president, who recently conceded he’s easily “seduced” by people who are nice to him — “Even if they’re bad people, I couldn’t care less” — has taken to heaping praise on his Chinese counterpart. “I have a great relationship with President Xi,” he said on Monday in the Oval Office. “I respect him a lot.” Trump has said China is being “very nice” in its approach to the Iran war. In a bit of showmanship that highlights both Trump’s own influence and the power of US business relationships with China, he will arrive with an entourage of 16 A-list executives whose companies have extensive business there. Among them: Apple’s Tim Cook, Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon and Tesla’s Elon Musk.

By contrast, the taciturn Xi, who’s shown no sign that he’s the least bit susceptible to flattery or boldface names, has chosen exactly the opposite approach to setting expectations for the discussions he’s hosting. Where Trump has adopted a friendly tone before the summit, Xi has shown a decidedly harder line against Trump.

In a move that appears to take aim at US restrictions on sales of advanced semiconductors and chipmaking equipment to China, Beijing introduced rules in April to discourage foreign and domestic companies from shifting global supply chains away from the country or limiting its access to technology and raw materials. The new regulations give government agencies the authority to investigate and retaliate against countries or businesses that take actions the Chinese government deems as a threat to the security of China’s supply chain. This could lead to penalties for manufacturers looking to avoid US tariffs on Chinese-made products by moving production elsewhere — potentially leaving companies to choose which is worse: running afoul of China’s decree or incurring Trump’s wrath.

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Watch: Trump, Xi to Meet for High-Stakes US-China Summit

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Explainer: What to Expect From the Trump-Xi Summit in Beijing

In Brief

With the war in Iran pushing inflation to unexpected highs, the humble I bond — an inflation-protected, US-government-backed security — is once again looking like an attractive place to park some cash.
The new owner of Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, Stephen Deckoff, has been dealing with curiosity-seekers and voyeurs, some of whom believe Epstein is still alive or are on a mission to fight “monsters.”
McDonald’s will put its name on the Chicago Fire Football Club’s new $750 million field, the restaurant chain’s first-ever naming rights deal for a major professional US sports stadium.

Turning on Big Tech

On the day Silicon Valley turned against him, Ro Khanna was supposed to be on vacation. It was late December, Congress was out of session, and the California Democrat had planned on spending the time with his family, but he couldn’t resist stirring the pot on social media. In between lighter posts (followers now know his favorite Christmas carol is “Joy to the World”), he riffed on the Epstein files, suggested that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. should be turned into a customer-owned co-op and called the right-wing livestreamer Nick Fuentes a racist. He also wished Fuentes a merry Christmas. “I was just kind of tweeting out things,” Khanna recalls.

Just tweeting out things has taken Khanna, whose congressional district includes much of Silicon Valley, impressively far. Although he possesses some valuable assets for political success — Yale law degree, wealth by marriage, chumminess with many of the Valley’s most powerful businessmen — he’s almost comically deficient in charisma. On the stump, he lacks the happy-warrior energy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the looks of Gavin Newsom, even the crotchety gravitas of Bernie Sanders. In conversation, too, Khanna often comes off as hopelessly bookish, more likely to reference a German Enlightenment philosopher than a pro athlete or a pop star. What comes most naturally to him seems to be scolding, a skill that makes him, if not a natural politician, a natural reply guy, write Max Chafkin and Eliyahu Kamisher.

What was the post that turned tech figures against Khanna? And how is he establishing himself as a presidential contender with a wealth tax and tough talk about the “Epstein class”?

Sea Mines and the Internet

Illustration: Petra Péterffy for <em>Bloomberg Businessweek</em>

The Ile de Batz was installing a section of a 28,000-mile undersea internet cable to link Europe to Asia via the Persian Gulf when the war in Iran brought things to a halt in early March. The ship’s owner declared a force majeure, and the vessel was sent back to port in Saudi Arabia, where it’s been stranded ever since. Work on the fiber-optic cable, as well as at least two other high-capacity cable projects in the region, has been indefinitely paused, write Olivia Solon and Loni Prinsloo.

If a permanent ceasefire is reached and activity does resume in the Gulf, installation won’t simply continue as before. The technology and telecommunications companies funding these cables will have a new problem to deal with: unexploded missiles and mines littering the seabed along or near their planned routes. They’ll likely need to rescan parts of the seafloor with magnetic and acoustic sensors to make sure everything is safe. As a result, says Hasnain Ali, a subsea cable consultant working out of the United Arab Emirates, “almost all those projects are going to be delayed.”

The US-Israel war on Iran has exposed the fragility of the internet’s multibillion-dollar physical backbone. See what it will take to strengthen the cable infrastructure.

Modi’s Gold Fight

600-800 tons

That’s how much gold India imports every year, making it the second-biggest consumer of the precious metal, surpassed only by China. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked citizens to stop buying gold for at least a year to shore up foreign exchange reserves. India’s external finances have come under pressure from the war in the Middle East and the resulting surge in energy prices.

Reclaim Your Time

Saying no is a big business. Every year, a half-dozen wordily titled books come out on the concept. Recent examples include The Power of a Positive No; Stop People Pleasing: How to Start Saying No, Set Healthy Boundaries, and Express Yourself; and The Art of Saying No: How to Stand Your Ground, Reclaim Your Time and Energy, and Refuse to Be Taken for Granted (Without Feeling Guilty!).

Last year’s Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes by Sunita Sah was a USA Today bestseller. And if you asked me to tabulate how many TED Talks there have been about refusing to do something, I’d get some practice in the art myself.

And yet, we don’t seem to get the hang of it. Part of the problem is human nature; as a species we are programmed to say yes because collaboration is necessary for our survival. But saying no — to requests, to distractions, to obligations, to opportunities — has also gotten harder. Technology has grown incredibly efficient at serving up our time and energy to others. Our phones make it hard to deny the expectation that with emails, texts and Slack, we are always on. Even our true downtime isn’t immune. Endless scrolls keep us glued to screens, notifications on social media leave us with FOMO, and videos and podcasts fill the darkest tunnels of the subway commute with ads for talk therapy. The purpose of much of the “saying no” economy is to reclaim our time — for our goals, for our families, for the restorative act of doing nothing, writes Chris Rovzar.

How can we win when the odds seem so stacked against us? We’ve got some ideas.

Top, from left: Rolex, IWC, Omega, Richard Mille, Alpina, Patek Philippe. Bottom, from left: Vacheron Constantin, Cartier, Audemars Piguet, Greubel Forsey, Oris, Panerai.

Plus: How to Track the Time? Try These Dazzling Watches

Colored ceramics and reimagined classics lead this year’s design trends in high-end horology.

Sharing the Burden

“When my daughter was born, we realized that pretty much the only thing I cannot do is breastfeed. Childcare is way more than the kid; it’s making sure the family runs, there’s food on the table, making sure everybody has clean clothes.”

Kenji Yamauchi

Commercial video editor in New York City

For the first time in a generation, college-educated fathers are spending substantially more time on their homes and kids than they did just a few years ago, often cutting working hours to do it.