Editor's note: Global Morning Briefing summarizes global news reported by Seoul Economic Daily.
Stealth Bombers Beside the State Dinner: Taiwan Tops U.S.-China Summit Agenda
U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to pair the highest level of protocol with a subtle show of military pressure as Chinese President Xi Jinping makes his first state visit to the United States in 11 years. The White House released the schedule for the three-day summit, running from the 23rd to the 25th, on the 21st.
Trump will greet Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, in person at Joint Base Andrews on the afternoon of the 23rd. At the White House state welcoming ceremony on the 24th, a flyover is planned featuring B-2 stealth bombers and F-22 Raptor fighters, the same aircraft deployed in strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Analysts read the flyover as a wordless display of military power. Later that day, first lady Melania Trump and Peng will meet for the first time in nine years and tour the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art together, followed by a state dinner in the evening.
Taiwan is seen as the biggest point of contention on the summit agenda. Xi is expected to demand an end to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, citing the 1982 U.S.-China joint communique, and may in return signal willingness to cooperate on pressuring Iran. At an earlier meeting of the South Korean, U.S. and Japanese foreign ministers, the three sides issued a joint statement opposing attempts to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, a move aimed at checking China.
Meanwhile, expectations for diplomatic solutions to the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine grew on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly, sending West Texas Intermediate crude down 4.5% to $96.78 a barrel that day.
"No Grand Bargain": Greer Draws the Line
The U.S. government has signaled that the summit between Trump and Xi on the 24th may not produce an agreement to extend the tariff truce. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a Bloomberg TV interview on the 21st that an extension agreement was unlikely within the week for the truce, which expires on Nov. 10. He added that talks would continue because both sides want an extension.
In a Fox News interview the same day, Greer said no grand bargain would emerge, given how differently the two countries' economic and political systems are structured. Instead, he said the summit would serve as an occasion to begin substantive discussions on artificial intelligence between Washington and Beijing and to set the operating procedures and target items for a trade committee. According to The New York Times, China is asking to extend the truce by six months or more, while the United States is demanding that Beijing expand rare earth supplies and increase purchases of U.S. farm products. After Trump returned to office, the two countries raised tariffs to 145% on the U.S. side and 125% on the Chinese side before agreeing to sharp reductions in May last year.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has coordinated the summit agenda, said in a CNBC interview that the two countries had begun formal talks on AI safety rules. He projected that a follow-up meeting would take place in about two months, on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, in November. Bessent said Iran sanctions were also discussed and stressed that Chinese financial authorities, including People's Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng, are deeply involved in the related consultations. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun, however, made clear his opposition to the sanctions on Iranian airlines that Bessent mentioned, calling them illegal unilateral sanctions.
Shutting Out the Press, Switching On YouTube: Trump's Double Game
After Trump labeled some news organizations "fake news" and restricted their access to the White House, major broadcasters launched a joint boycott. According to foreign media reports on the 21st, five networks — CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News — suspended their participation in the White House television pool that day. They said the public has a right to accurate and independent information about the government, and that no administration should restrict specific news organizations over coverage it dislikes. If the pool's refusal to cover continues, Xi's visit to the United States beginning on the 23rd and his U.N. General Assembly address may not be broadcast nationwide.
A day earlier, Trump revoked the White House credentials of CNN, MS NOW and Politico, and went on to label The New York Times and The Washington Post fake news. He had earlier notified The New York Times, NBC and others to vacate their Pentagon press workspaces. Foreign media analysts trace Trump's view of the press to Roy Cohn, the lawyer who mentored him in the 1970s. Facing a racial discrimination lawsuit at the time, Trump followed Cohn's advice to countersue and fight in the court of public opinion, turning the case around, and afterward actively used the media as a vehicle to burnish his image.
He turned against the press in the 1990s, when his casino bankruptcies and divorce drew heavy coverage, and after launching his presidential bid in 2015 he made a strategy of branding critical outlets fake news to erode their credibility. During his time in office, he signed an executive order cutting off federal funding for public broadcasters NPR and PBS, while maintaining close communication with friendly outlets such as Fox News to extend his influence.
Separately, The Hill, a political news outlet, reported that the White House began broadcasting a YouTube channel called "Trump TV: The Essential Station" at 7 p.m. Eastern time that day, carrying news about Trump around the clock.
Meta's Comeback as an AI Latecomer: Personal Assistant "Muse" Takes Off
Meta's AI personal assistant Muse overtook OpenAI's ChatGPT to become the No. 1 free app download on both Apple's App Store and Google Play in the United States, 13 days after its release. On the news, Meta shares jumped 11.43% from the previous session to $741.24 on the New York market on the 21st.
Muse's strength is seen in its ability to grasp user context across Facebook Marketplace and Instagram as well as outside services such as Google's Gmail. Given a goal once, it carries out the task on its own without further instructions, and is designed to seek user approval only at sensitive steps such as final sending or payment, reducing the risk of malfunction. Its pricing structure — up to 100 million tokens a week free, with heavy users charged $20 or $100 a month — is also credited with expanding its subscriber base. Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Bernstein, said in a CNBC interview that most AI agents released so far had failed to target general consumers, but that recent agents including Muse are finally showing what is possible.
Muse's success has also rippled through the semiconductor industry. Because central processing units are the key component determining an AI agent's reasoning capability, TrendForce projected that the ratio of CPUs to GPUs in data centers could shift from the current one-to-eight to about one-to-one as agents spread. AMD shares surged 9.95% that day, pushing its market capitalization past $1 trillion to become the fourth U.S. semiconductor company to reach that mark, while Intel rose 12.14%. Arm Holdings, which has announced its entry into the server CPU market, gained 17.16%, and Qualcomm, which will supply its own CPUs to Meta starting in 2028, rose 9.29%. Buoyed by strength in chip stocks, the Nasdaq composite set a record high.
Near a 52-Week Low, CATL Sheds a Quarter of Its Value in a Month
CATL, the world's largest battery maker, has lost nearly a quarter of its market value over the past month amid concerns that automaker customers are moving away. On the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on the 21st, CATL closed down 1.61% from the previous session at 297.10 yuan, narrowly avoiding its 52-week low of 295.55 yuan. The stock has fallen 24.04% in September and 36.5% from its early-May peak this year.
The immediate cause of the decline is supply chain diversification by major automakers. Li Auto invested 2.65 billion yuan to become the second-largest shareholder in Sunwoda and fitted its new vehicles with Sunwoda batteries instead of CATL's. Xiaomi, which had mainly used CATL batteries, said it would jointly develop batteries with CALB and cooperate across the entire supply chain, while Xpeng increased its share of supply from EVE Energy.
Behind these moves is profit pressure in China's auto industry. Cutthroat competition driven by weak domestic demand cut automakers' profits 20% in the January-July period, while CATL alone thrived, approaching a 50% share of the Chinese market. CATL's net profit in the first half of this year, at 43.284 billion yuan, was double the combined 21.048 billion yuan posted by 15 major listed Chinese automakers. Automakers also calculate that joining hands with smaller battery makers gives them a stronger position in product development and price negotiations.
Still, the prevailing view is that CATL's market dominance will not be shaken for some time. Automakers cannot cut ties with CATL entirely, and the company is diversifying into energy storage systems and battery recycling. CATL expects the share of revenue from energy storage, now about 25%, to expand to 50% within a few years. Kenny Ng Lai-yin, a strategist at Everbright Securities, said CATL's market share would remain stable for the time being, given the high barriers to entry in the electric-vehicle battery industry, which requires enormous capital and technology investment and takes time to build up talent.
