LARRY KUDLOW: Can anyone ever trust or believe the CCP?

Sentiment is good in Asia, where president Trump’s tour is yielding important trade deals and national security ties. The stock market is loving it as the Trump boom continues, and markets are almost in meltdown mode. Profits are key to the market, but peaceful business deals are beneficial. When the dust settles, the impact of the US tariff rate could be around 15%, a good low number to help profits and not retaliate from the trade war, at least in Asia.

Here’s a key point: The agreements with Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand include special provisions for transit shipping. This is intended to prevent Communist China from channeling its cheap exports through these countries in order to hide its unfair trade practices.

In Japan, Trump appears to be getting along well with new Prime Minister Sanae Takaishi, who has nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Japan will buy a lot of Ford F-150 trucks and help America produce rare earth elements. It appears that Japanese investments amounting to $550 billion in the United States will take place in one form or another over a period of time.

Then there is China. So far, the China story seems like a kind of back to the future. By that I mean that Secretary Scott Besent’s so-called “framework” includes suspending China’s rare earth moratorium, perhaps for a year, in which case Mr. Trump would presumably suspend additional tariffs by 100%. We don’t know this for sure, but it seems likely.

China will resume purchasing soybeans, whose market price suddenly jumped to $11 a bushel. Some sort of new deal on fentanyl is being reported, but Beijing was supposed to crack down on the export of precursor chemicals that produce fentanyl seven years ago.

I was there at the bilateral G20 dinner in Buenos Aires, Argentina when Mr. Trump raised the fentanyl issue with President Xi Jinping as his first order of business. Mr. Xi was saying yes to stopping fentanyl, when the reality is that he never stopped fentanyl. Will we believe him now? Mr. Xi believes he has leverage when it comes to rare earths, but America has leverage as the world’s largest economy. The United States has more influence because we just wiped out Iran and took China out of the Middle East game.

The United States has more influence because the Chinese are being stopped in places like Venezuela, Argentina, and other places in South America. For some reason, Mr. Xi believes that Mr. Trump will roll back the independence of the Republic of China in Taiwan, but don’t bet on it. Mr. Trump expects China to stop buying Russian oil that is financing the Ukraine war. If they do not, secondary sanctions would presumably take Chinese trade entirely out of the dollar system. And I think TikTok will sell, although it’s definitely not my favorite sell because I see it as a big Chinese spy algorithm.

And then finally, America will launch an investigation into the original Phase One deal between the United States and China. There are a lot of investigations to be done there, because Beijing has basically committed to none of them. This deal was signed nearly six years ago. I’ve been there for that too. Can anyone trust or believe the Chinese Communist Party? Just ask.