Daines Previews President Trump’s Historic China Visit on CNBC

• May 13, 2026

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Steve Daines today joined CNBC's Squawk Box to discuss President Trump's historic visit to China.

Watch the full interview HERE.

Daines on his trip to China last week:

I arrived back to the United States late Friday night, but I was in Shanghai for a couple of days and then went to Beijing on that high-speed train. I had four other U.S. senators with me. It was a bipartisan delegation. We spent Thursday of last week with high-level meetings. We met the Premier, Li Qiang. We met the Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, as well as the MPC Chairman. And we were very respectfully received. I think this is the most important bilateral relationship in the world. Two of the world's largest economies, 40 percent of the world's GDP, the two largest militaries. It's very important that the United States and China have a constructive relationship. I'm pleased to see President Trump's leadership in de-escalating the tensions between the two countries and reminding everybody that this is the second time President Trump has been to China. He was there in 2017. Of course, he just arrived in Beijing minutes ago. President Biden never went to China. So kudos to President Trump for continuing to engage with Xi Jinping and to continue to work to stabilize and improve this relationship….

…It was my eighth visit as a U.S. Senator. I've been leading delegations there for my entire career in the U.S. Senate. But I first lived in China back in 1992. I was an expat with Procter & Gamble. My wife and I moved over to Guangzhou, leading the expansion of great U.S. brands into that huge market. We had two children born in Hong Kong. And so that six years was foundational in terms of seeing China of that time frame when they were a $500 billion economy, today nearly $20 trillion. One of the other purposes of my visit last week, besides engaging the leadership, and as a precursor certainly President Trump's visit, and that was to make sure senators see the innovation ecosystem going on in China. World-class innovation occurring in the high-tech space, whether it's biotech, whether it's AI, whether it's chips, automobile manufacturing. It's jaw-dropping what's happening right now in China, and that's why it's so important. I believe that U.S. businesses are allowed to engage in China to compete with these Chinese companies because they are now rapidly advancing in terms of their capabilities from a technology viewpoint.

Daines on Perdue's leadership as U.S. Ambassador to China:

I just got to shout out Ambassador David Perdue. I spent a lot of time with David last week. We were both expats working in China in the 90s. He was in Hong Kong back when the Brits still had it. We were in Guangzhou. We then became U.S. senators together in 2014. David and I go back a long ways. And he is a fantastic ambassador. We can't ask for a better guy to be leading our efforts there diplomatically on the ground in in China. He understands China so well, he has great relationships with the Chinese leadership, and of course, he's a text message and phone call away from President Trump, which is what you want to have as an ambassador.

Daines on potential outcomes of U.S.-China summit:

Clearly, it's in both leaders' interests to keep the relationship stable and to de-escalate, not to decouple. We need to continue to work to de-risk certain areas, certainly in rare earths where we have dependencies on China. We hope to see some kind of trade deals come out. I think it'll be Boeing, beef, and beans is perhaps one idea. They haven't purchased any Boeing aircraft for nine years. There's a potential for a large aircraft deal with Boeing. U.S. beef is the largest export market in the world behind the United States, and we'd like to get access to that market, which we once had. It's been shut down since a year ago in March. Of course, our farmers need more access for soybeans, for wheat, barley, and so forth. So that would be, I think, an important transaction and ought to be fairly straightforward. But we also have to continue to work on the fentanyl precursor issue. That's something I was working with the Premier on year ago. We're seeing some progress there. I was talking to our DEA guys on the ground in Beijing last week. We're starting to get better cooperation with the Chinese authorities to help address this scourge, this poisoning of America with fentanyl and these precursors are sent from China to Mexico. And then, of course, you were talking earlier about the AI. I don't think we'll see any breakthroughs there. That's a tough issue. But perhaps establish a framework or some kind of dialogue going forward where we can keep these two technology superpowers here engaged on this important topic.

Daines on the importance of the Chinese economy for American businesses:

I think if you step back and look at the size and magnitude of China in that market, we tend to be focused on trade deficits, and rightfully so. And trade deficits decrease from $300 billion with China to $200 billion year-over-year. But let's not lose sight of the fact that the S&P 500 did about $1.2 trillion of top-line revenue business last year with China. China plays a very important role in terms of tying to U.S. businesses and driving our successes here in America directly relating to jobs, fueling top-line revenues, investments in R&D, next-generation development of products. So what's unprecedented, though, with China… Unlike, for example, the challenge we faced with the Soviet Union and Russia of years ago, is that China now is such a massive economy. They're second in the world. It's not even really a close third place. You drop to Japan, but you've got nearly a $20 trillion economy in China. But they also now have one of the world's largest militaries. So it's both large military and economy. When we were dealing with the Soviet Union years ago, they never had really a large economy. They had a large military. There's really important reasons from an economic viewpoint and a national security viewpoint that we maintain constructive dialogue and positive back and forth with the Chinese. They play the longer game in some ways better than we do. But I tell you, President Trump, credit to him, two times now he's visited as President of the United States, something again that President Biden never did.

Daines on U.S. economic dominance:

Kudos to free markets and capitalism and God bless America. And that's what makes us great and why we will continue to win. And President Trump is walking into these discussions. It will be tomorrow, Beijing time, in a position of strength economically speaking and I think China's economy, while they tout a five percent kind of GDP growth rate, I think the reality is probably closer to two to three percent and they're seeing some high levels of unemployment with young people probably 15 to 20 percent. We are seeing a massive high rise of empty buildings. They call them the ghost buildings across China, where they've overbuilt. They've got too much capacity. They've got a lot of debt. Their debt problem is much more severe than ours. So we're in a position of strength, economically speaking, as President Trump walks in with Xi Jinping tomorrow.

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