Made in China: How Trump Continues to Squander American Power

While MAGA remains faithful, the rest of the world is growing tired of Trump, his antics, and the people he surrounds himself with.

There is a kind of smile a host wears when the guests need the party more than the party needs them — gracious, unhurried, very slightly amused — and Xi Jinping was wearing it on the steps of the Great Hall of the People.

Donald Trump had come to Beijing, the first American state visit to China since 2017, and, being Trump, he had not come quietly, and he had certainly not come alone. He had come with a court. Trailing him was a procession of seventeen-odd chief executives whose combined fortune Forbes put at around $870 billion: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man; Tim Cook, whose entire luminous empire happens to be screwed together inside the very country he was visiting; Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Taiwan-born, not even on the original list and folded in only when he scrambled aboard Air Force One during its Alaska refueling; Larry Fink of BlackRock; Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone; Jane Fraser of Citigroup; and the chiefs of Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Qualcomm, Mastercard, Visa. Around th…