President Donald Trump left Beijing on Thursday after two days of talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping that both sides described as historic and neither side followed with a signed agreement.
The summit produced a framework. Xi called it a “constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability” and said it would guide relations “for the next three years and beyond,” according to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Trump told Fox News that China had agreed to order 200 Boeing aircraft, CNBC reported. It would be China’s first purchase of American commercial jets in nearly a decade. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said an agreement for China to purchase “double-digit billions” in American agricultural products was also expected, including soybeans, oil, and liquefied natural gas. Wall Street had anticipated more. Analysts at Jefferies had projected China might order as many as 500 jets.
Xi warned that Taiwan remained “the most important and sensitive issue” in the relationship, according to CNN. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said U.S. policy on Taiwan is “unchanged.” During the summit, Chinese military aircraft stopped their near-daily flights near Taiwan, a shift from their routine pattern. Trump said he and Xi discussed Iran and agreed that Tehran shouldn’t have a nuclear weapon, though Rubio told NBC News that Trump didn’t ask Xi for help ending the war.
It was Trump’s first trip to China since November 2017, when he visited Beijing as part of a twelve-day Asia tour. That visit produced $250 billion in preliminary trade agreements, many of which never materialized. This time, the announced deals were smaller.
In February 1972, Richard Nixon flew to Beijing and met Mao Zedong. The trip produced no trade deals and no formal diplomatic recognition. What it produced was the Shanghai Communiqué, a framework document that defined the terms of U.S.-China engagement for the next fifty-four years. Xi’s phrase on Thursday is an attempt at the same kind of architecture. Whether it holds the way the Communiqué held won’t be answered this week. It will be answered over years.
Russia launched more than 1,560 drones at Ukraine starting Wednesday, the largest aerial barrage since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, CNN reported. An additional 56 missiles were fired overnight Thursday. More than 180 sites across the country were damaged, including more than 50 residential buildings.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had “stockpiled drones and missiles over a period of time and deliberately timed the strike to ensure its scale was significant and the challenges for our air defense were as great as possible.” A Kh-101 cruise missile struck a residential apartment building in Kyiv, collapsing several floors. At least seventeen people were killed, including a twelve-year-old girl. The mayor of Kyiv called it “the enemy’s largest-scale attack on the capital” and declared a day of mourning.
The barrage came days after a three-day ceasefire that began May 9, Victory Day, and ran through May 11. President Trump had brokered the pause, and Moscow initially suggested it could lead to broader talks. Instead, Ukrainian officials said, Russia used the ceasefire to stockpile the weapons it fired this week. Zelensky said Ukraine is preparing a response.
Fourteen varieties of snacks from Calbee Inc., one of Japan’s largest food companies, will switch to black-and-white packaging starting May 25. The reason isn’t a rebrand. It’s a war five thousand miles from Tokyo, NPR reported.
Japan imports forty percent of its naphtha from the Middle East. Naphtha is a petroleum derivative that most people have never heard of, but it sits behind the colored inks, plastic films, adhesives, and coatings that make modern food packaging possible. The conflict in Iran and the disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz have cut into those supplies. Calbee said it would “respond flexibly and promptly to changes in its operating environment, including geopolitical risks.” The change affects the company’s flagship potato chips and its Kappa Ebisen shrimp crackers, along with twelve other products. The snacks inside the bags, the company noted, haven’t changed.
In October 1973, the Arab oil embargo disrupted petroleum exports worldwide. In Japan, consumers panicked about toilet paper. The product itself wasn’t directly scarce, but the petroleum-based materials in its supply chain were, and the fear traveled faster than the facts. Fifty-three years later, a different conflict in the same region is turning chip bags gray.
The Republican primary in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District has become the most expensive U.S. House primary in American history, with more than $29 million spent on advertising, CNN reported. The previous record was $25.2 million, set during the 2024 Democratic primary in New York’s 16th District.
At the center of the spending is seven-term incumbent Thomas Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican who has broken with his party on spending bills and foreign aid. No Republican in Congress, CNN noted, has drawn more of Trump’s anger than Massie. Trump recruited Ed Gallrein, a farmer and former Navy SEAL, to challenge him and visited Kentucky in March to make his preference clear.
A Quantus Insights poll published Wednesday showed Gallrein leading 48.3 percent to 43.1 percent. The race has drawn national attention as a test of whether a president’s endorsement, backed by tens of millions in outside money, can unseat a sitting member of his own party in a safe Republican district.
“They’ve wasted $10 million in my race already,” Massie wrote on X. “Imagine if they had used that in Virginia.” The primary is Tuesday.
Dr. Marty Makary resigned as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration on Monday after a thirteen-month tenure, CNBC reported.
Makary tried to hold a position between Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again agenda and the pharmaceutical industry’s expectations for predictable regulation. He satisfied neither. Trump rebuked him publicly for not moving quickly to approve flavored vapes. Days before his departure, the FDA approved flavored vapes from a company called Glas Inc., a decision that came after Trump pressured Makary to authorize the products. Anti-abortion organizations objected to his handling of mifepristone. Drug companies pushed back on his regulatory approach.
“Marty is a terrific guy, but he’s going to go on and he’s going to lead a good life,” Trump told reporters before departing for China. “He was having some difficulty.” Kyle Diamantas, who had served as the FDA’s top food official, will lead the agency in an acting capacity. Since Trump took office, the agency has had an acting commissioner, then Makary, and now another acting commissioner.
It is Friday. A summit in Beijing produced a phrase and a plane order but no signatures. In Ukraine, 1,560 drones fell in two days, the most the country has absorbed since the war began. In Japan, chip bags are losing their color because a war in the Persian Gulf disrupted the petroleum that makes ink. In Kentucky, $29 million is being spent to decide one House seat. At the FDA, the commissioner’s office is empty again. That’s the day.
If you have some time this weekend, Lorraine Kessler has been writing the kind of advice column that doesn’t pretend the hard questions have simple answers. Her Since You Asked column is in our Letters section, and the most recent piece is the kind of thing you read once and think about for the rest of the afternoon.
