China's President Xi Jinping (R) and US President Donald Trump talk during their visit to the Temple of Heaven in Beijing on May 14, 2026. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Pool via REUTERS
While President Donald Trump is in China, American anger is growing about the struggling economy and the impacts of his war in Iran and the ongoing trade war. Those voters are now the X factor in Trump's trip, and China could use it as leverage, a CNN reporter explained.
Co-host Sara Sidner asked reporter David Goldman if there was an opportunity for both sides, but as one military expert explained this week, Trump is coming at this with "incredible weakness."
"So if you think about what each of the leaders is wanting to extract from one another, there are five things," listed Goldman. "There are five numbers, I think, that we can all think about to kind of understand what's on the agenda. The first is 600 million. We talked about that in the last hour. That's the number of Chinese AI users according to China."
He said that it's the reason that Trump brought along tech CEOs like Tim Cook and Jensen Huang.
The second number he cited was 93 percent, which is "the control that China has over rare earth minerals. Now, everything that goes beep has rare earths in it. And you need rare earths for all kinds of, you know, industrial electronics. And what else do you need them for? Weaponry," said Goldman.
The third number is 80 percent, which is "the amount of Iranian oil that China buys," Goldman said. One of Trump's aims is to see if he can convince China to influence Iran to sign a peace agreement with the U.S. that agrees that it will relinquish all control of its enriched uranium and open the Strait of Hormuz. While China has an enormous oil stockpile, Goldman said that both countries still want the Strait to reopen.
Fourth, he cited $25 billion, which is the amount of weaponry that Taiwan agreed to purchase from the United States.
"There has been no more forceful argument that she has made during this summit than that we need to talk about Taiwan very seriously. That is a huge amount of leverage that President Trump goes in with," Goldman said.
Finally, the tariff the U.S. currently imposes on China is 10 percent. Granted, it was 145 percent one year ago.
"It's about to get real," Goldman summarized.