VIVIAN SALAMA: Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

I'm Vivian Salama in tonight for Jeffrey Goldberg.

President Trump returned from his trip to Asia boasting of trade deals with China and South Korea, but he topped off the visit vowing to resume nuclear weapons testing, breaking a decades-long moratorium respected by most of the world's nuclear powers, and underscoring the yin-yang of Trump foreign policy, all the while the consequences of the now month-long federal shutdown are being felt across the country.

Joining me tonight to discuss this and more, Paul Beckett is a senior editor at The Atlantic, Jeff Mason is White House correspondent for Reuters, Seung Min Kim is White House reporter for the Associated Press, and Andrea Mitchell is the chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News.

Thanks so much for joining me, everyone.

Andrea, I want to start with you.

The president, obviously, just getting back from this almost week-long trip to Asia, what did he set out looking to accomplish?

ANDREA MITCHELL, Chief Washington and Foreign Affairs Correspondent, NBC News: Well, he set out to get deals and to announce deals, but most importantly to meet with Xi Jinping.

And the fact is they got a truce in the trade war, but it's a trade war that the president started without realizing, I think, the unintended consequences and the leverage that China had over the U.S.

China has this huge advantage on rare earth minerals.

So, there's a one-year moratorium on any kind of export controls by China, the fentanyl agreement, the initial soybean agreement to repurchase soybeans from American farmers instead of from Brazil, which had cut off, you know, potentially billions of dollars from farmers, and red state farmers were, you know, screaming against the White House for that, which is basically because of the 100 percent tariff threat that he had made against Beijing.

So, he lifted that fentanyl surcharge, that tariff no longer imposing the 100 percent tariff on China.

So, there's a one-year delay.

It was a positive meeting.

He called it a 12, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10.

But I think what was unfortunate -- well, first of all, he didn't get anything on Ukraine that I can see, that from either side, any concession on China buying, you know, excessive amounts of oil from Russia nor dual use technology or anything else that they're doing to help keep -- to fuel the Russian military operation against Ukraine.

And nothing on the South China Sea, where China has been aggressively, you know, and illegally, you know, commanding control over international waters and interfering with a lot of, you know, international shipping as well as ours and buzzing us.

And the other piece is that he didn't get anything really on rare earth minerals or any kind of important concessions.

And just before walking in, he raised this nuclear issue, which confused everyone.

It wasn't clear what he was talking about.

He talked about a DOE order and the -- rather DOD order to the Pentagon.

The Pentagon controls missiles, not bombs bursting right in the air that we have not, you know, done since 1992.

So, what was he talking about?

That's the Energy Department, not the Pentagon.

VIVIAN SALAMA: Absolutely.

I definitely want to get back to the nuclear issue.

But, Paul, you know, we've seen since the first -- the president's first term in office this sort of effort to get some sort of a deal with China, but a lot of it has just been this back and forth, tit-for-tat without any real major outcomes.

So, can you kind of broaden it out, 30,000 foot view of what he's trying to accomplish?

What are they trying to accomplish?

PAUL BECKETT, Senior Editor, The Atlantic: We call them all trade talks, right?

And there are some soybeans and there are some -- you know, tariffs come down a little bit.

These are national security talks about the future defense of these two enormous countries.

I mean, what was on the line?

Rare earths, as you say, that China has said basically nobody's getting any of our rare earths, and they agreed to hold off that for one year.

The U.S.

agreed to back off a national security entities list that had prevented Chinese companies from doing business in the United States on national security grounds.

And the U.S.

said, we'll hold off for one year.

Chips, can China get NVidia chips?

People, really, a lot of the national security establishment did not want any progress on giving China these NVidia or allowing China to buy these NVidia sophisticated A.I.

chips for their technological development.

That's a little murky about whether it will actually go ahead, but these are things that get to the core of in ten or 20 years who's going to run the world, right?

It's a bit -- it's more than soybeans and it's more than tariffs.

So -- and in this case, we also see that, they're like, okay, we'll pause for a year.

What does that mean?

It means this is going to be a perpetual negotiation between now and next year.

And they'll be back at the table next year and the Chinese will say, well, we still control 90 percent of the rare earth in the world, and all we have to do is say you can't have them and you can't develop cars, weapons, any other huge industrial stakes on the line.

So, it's about that.

It's about ruling the future, and they kind of shook hands and walked out.

VIVIAN SALAMA: And, I mean, Jeff, so much of that for the president is very personal because he sees the economy and prosperity for the Americans as his thing, and potentially the Chinese being in the path of achieving that goal.

JEFF MASON, White House Correspondent, Reuters: Yes, absolutely.

I think it's also important to note that before the meeting that they had, he had already blown it up and then they came back.

You know, he offered this or threatened this one potential 100percent tariff on Chinese goods, walked that back with the help of secretary of Bessent, the treasury secretary who set up the meeting.

But then he walked in.

He had this peer-to-peer meeting with this other sort of autocratic leader who we know that he has a tendency to favor and walked out saying it was a 12 out of 10.

So -- and the other kind of takeaways I think that we should also note in addition to the ones that the two of you just mentioned is setting up more meetings.

The president said he's going to go to China next year, and that the president of China's going to come to the United States.

So, that is a sign that even though there have been a bunch of bumps in the road in this relationship, that they are planning for future meetings and for future progress.

VIVIAN SALAMA: And there were other meetings that the president held, obviously stopped in Malaysia, Seung Min, he stopped in Japan, he stopped in South Korea.

And, I mean, the pomp and fanfare was just in full force.

The flattery efforts were in full force.

What do you think world leaders are learning about how to deal with President Trump?

SEUNG MIN KIM, White House Reporter, The Associated Press: Flattery is the fastest way to his heart is what they have learned and really utilizing in Trump's second term.

My colleagues and I wrote about this, about how the president really did seem to be enjoying himself on this trip.

You know, during the first term, these foreign trips weren't necessarily his favorite -- the favorite parts of his term in the White House.

But now, especially that world leaders have learned to pull out all the stops for President Trump, he's really having a good time.

You saw him on the tarmac in Malaysia dancing as he was welcomed to the country.

In South Korea, he was granted with honors and a gold crown.

Obviously, gold is very deliberately chosen there.

But this has, this is not unique to this particular trip.

You saw how at NATO earlier this year that the secretary general basically said he was the daddy to NATO.

They know that, you know, flattering him, kind of bolstering him is the way to work with him.

And that's certainly something that world leaders have learned and is a change from his first term.

VIVIAN SALAMA: Absolutely.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Yes.

One of the big things is stability, and so there's a year of relative stability on the economic front, which is important.

Because there is going to be a meeting in April, a return, you know, meeting, he's going to Beijing, then Xi Jinping is coming here.

So, that's all important.

They haven't had good communications, military-to-military, so there have been all kinds of interruptions and threats and counter threats.

But, again, it's a trade war that was unnecessary that the president started, and now China is still holding the cards.

And one of the things that I just saw was an extraordinary report on the power lines to Shanghai from, you know, all the way across China by solar and wind technology, green technology that China has leaped forward on as this administration has, you know, criticized wind and said, we're going to, you know, drill, drill, drill and looking backwards in terms of what these needed for these data centers to power, you know, these huge new data centers for A.I.

that are going to really, you know, become an economic problem, and a power problem, a source of power problem, and a problem for utility costs across America.

JEFF MASON: All of that in mind as well.

It's also possible that the president could blow it up again, as we saw with Canada.

So, the president has walked out ebullient from that meeting and super confident, but he was pretty pleased with Canada as well at one point, and then -- ANDREA MITCHELL: And he's today said he will not resume talks with Canada.

So, he's punishing Canada.

You know, I was just in Canada doing it on a reporting trip.

And punishing Canada for a provincial commercial, an ad that actually correctly quotes Ronald Reagan from one of his radios, which is on tariffs.

VIVIAN SALAMA: Right, in the middle of the World Series, which is -- ANDREA MITCHELL: Right, and was not Mark Carney or the national government's position.

It was not the prime minister who did this.

It was a more populist Ontario governor, and still punishing Carney by laying an extra 10 percent tariff on Canada.

JEFF MASON: It just underscores how much everything can change.

But, certainly, there is a year of stability set ahead if the agreement that they came up with stays in place.

Well, and, certainly, the rest of the world is watching the way that Trump is conducting business and kind of perplexed a little bit.

You know, he takes a bite out of them, but then everyone comes to the table, you know, it gives the opportunity to come to the table.

It creates a lot of economic uncertainty, though.

JEFF MASON: Absolutely, because things can change so quickly.

And we've seen that with the Canada example we just mentioned.

We've seen it with how the run up to the China meeting happened and how at the end, it ended in what he described as a very positive way.

VIVIAN SALAMA: Yes.

Andrea, you mentioned the president's suggestion about nuclear on Truth Social.

On his way back from Asia, he wrote on Truth Social that he instructed the Department of War, formerly known as the Department of Defense, to start testing our nuclear weapons on, quote, an equal basis, and he said that process will begin immediately.

Why the change in stance?

ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, first of all, he said it this in real time.

I was watching.

He said it in our time around 9:39:45 P.M.

exactly as he was about to walk into the meeting with President Xi.

So, the initial signal is, whoa, are we talking about China, which has the third largest arsenal, way smaller than the Russians.

No, he's most likely reacting, and he later clarified on his way back home that he was talking more likely about what Putin had done in the 48 previous hours in testing a new nuclear-powered missile.

So, not a nuclear -- VIVIAN SALAMA: It's important to note that the only country of all the nuclear powers that's tested a weapon in recent years was North Korea, and that's -- the last time was in 2017.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Correct, and we have not done it since 1992.

VIVIAN SALAMA: Right.

ANDREA MITCHELL: In addition, the only test site that is currently used or was used is in Nevada.

The Nevada legislature, unanimously in May, passed a vote against any nuclear testing.

So, it's very unpopular.

Now, it's a federal site, but it's unclear what he is asking for, because it's the Energy Department that would have to do this, not the Pentagon.

But then Secretary Hegseth the next day made it even more confusing, and so did the vice president.

So, one of the things that I'm worried about, frankly, as a citizen is, is the president projecting, like right before a meeting with the other superpower, like China, that he doesn't understand military terminology or nuclear weapons, and that the Pentagon doesn't, and that there's no process because I know Marco Rubio knows all this stuff.

He was the intel leader on the Senate and he knows it cold.

But this is actually in Project 2025.

This is one of the proposals, to resume bomb testing.

It's very controversial with nuclear experts.

All of the people who control nuclear weapons believe it's proliferating.

I talked to Jim Stavridis, who was our former NATO commander yesterday about this, and it would be a terrible idea in terms of proliferation to presume we are not signatories to the best test ban treaty, but we have observed it, as you point out, since 1992.

So, you're sending a signal that we don't have an understanding, and I think it is the result of no deputies, no policy papers.

And maybe this is Russ Vought, the author of the 2025 Project rather in 2024 pushing something, which is strategic policy that he knows really nothing about.

VIVIAN SALAMA: So, yesterday, Jeff and I were at the White House.

We saw Vice President Vance try to clarify some of this and he said, you know, sometimes you just have to dust it off and test it out, make sure everything is working properly.

But, Paul, you've been based in East Asia and Southeast Asia over the course of your career, nuclear powers across that region.

There's renewed tension between Pakistan and India.

It's been up and down lately, but tension nonetheless, both nuclear powers.

You know, you have North Korea that's also a nuclear power.

What signal does this send to the rest of the world when they're hearing the president of the United States talking like this?

PAUL BECKETT: Well, the national security hawks in Trump's camp, and Robert O'Brien, who was one of his former national security advisers, had proposed this a few years back.

So, they see that as that this is a sign of American muscle.

This is a sign of we have so many more -- you know, we have so many nukes that we're going to start testing them again.

We're going to advance our outdated arsenal and everybody heads up, we're going to get a lot stronger when it comes to nuclear weapons.

That's that camp.

The other camp says, which includes a lot of national security people, says, first of all, what we have has to be maintained in a state of readiness.

So, it's not a question of dusting them off and make -- that's done constantly, just not to the level of live testing like he's talking about.

And then, secondly, it's like, well, if the United States is going to do it, what permission does that give to a North Korea, any other country that actually has probably a lot of catching up to do?

But if you're doing live testing, you can catch up a lot faster than if you're having to do it under the confines of a treaty that you've signed.

So, I think that is the danger of it.

Whether it comes to pass or not, I think probably around the world, people are saying, is that really going to happen?

VIVIAN SALAMA: Right, which is probably a standard kind of response to a lot of President Trump's comments as well.