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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is considering raising the energy issue with his counterpart ahead of President Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping

Ahead of President Trump’s visit to Beijing, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is considering putting a tricky trade-off on the agenda for coming talks with his Chinese counterpart: reducing China’s oil purchases from U.S. adversaries like Russia.

In private consultations held in recent days with former U.S. officials, business executives and policy analysts, Bessent described a continuing effort to try to get China to instead buy American oil-and-gas products, said people familiar with the meetings. Bessent is thinking about raising the energy issue, the people said, in a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier He Lifeng, in Paris in mid-March. They are planning to firm up a framework for the April summit between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Reducing Russian oil purchases would be a big ask for China, which gets crude from its strategic ally at a significant discount. American oil would be much more expensive, and shutting out Russian crude would undermine Beijing’s relationship with the Kremlin and undercut Moscow’s position in the Ukraine war.

In addition, the people said, Bessent is also considering asking China to reduce purchases of Iranian oil. While most of Iranian oil is currently offline following the U.S.-Israeli strikes, Washington wants Beijing to reduce its long-term dependence on Iranian barrels should they resume.

Xi is also expected to present a significant demand of his own when he meets Trump, potentially pressing the American leader to adopt a more proactive U.S. stance against Taiwanese independence in a bid to undermine confidence in the self-governing democracy that Beijing views as part of its territory.

Bessent also indicated in those private meetings, the people said, that Washington is seeking expanded Chinese purchases of American soybeans and Boeing jets, as well as a relaxation of Beijing’s export controls on rare-earth elements, which are essential to the manufacturing of a range of electronics.

China, which dominates the flow of rare earths, choked them off last year in response to Trump’s imposition of new tariffs. U.S. manufacturers that rely on them to make everything from cars to jet fighters suffered. Senior U.S. officials said China’s adherence to a trade truce Beijing and Washington struck late last year in South Korea—where China agreed to a one-year suspension of its global export controls on the critical minerals—is top of mind for the U.S. heading into the next round of talks.

Beijing is expected to push for a reduction in tariffs and a loosening of U.S. export restrictions on high-tech components, particularly chip-making equipment and AI-related gear.

The senior U.S. officials said Bessent’s discussions leading up to the next round of talks with China have included sessions with former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Rob Spalding—an architect of the first Trump administration’s National Security Strategy—and executives at Blackstone, as well as policy analysts at the Asia Society and Hoover Institution.

The outreach reflects an attempt to move beyond friction over tariffs and establish a more predictable equilibrium between the world’s two largest economies. A senior administration official described Bessent as optimistic about the relationship with Beijing going into Trump’s summit with Xi.

Trump has signaled he wants China to buy more American oil and gas, specifically highlighting a potential large-scale transaction for Alaskan energy as part of the trade truce reached in late 2025. Washington is concerned broadly about China’s continued purchasing of Russian oil, which provides a critical financial lifeline to Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

China has long been reliant on cheap energy from U.S. adversaries. As of early 2026, imports from Russia and Iran, combined with disrupted supply from Venezuela, accounted for more than a third of China’s total oil imports.

Some American corporate leaders have expressed concern that the U.S. isn’t further along with identifying concrete goals to be achieved at the summit. The U.S. also hasn’t yet prepared a commercial delegation to attend the meeting with Trump, as happened in his first term, though Trump could still direct one to be put together.

U.S. officials disputed the notion that planning is lagging. A senior U.S. official said the administration is moving deliberatively to ensure talks are substantive.

Bessent has expressed concerns to some of the people he recently met with that the window for a substantive breakthrough with China will narrow if the Beijing summit fails to develop an agreeable plan that can be followed up during the next one or two meetings between the two leaders, the people familiar with the matter said.

A senior U.S. official said the administration sees the April summit as the beginning of discussions, noting that the relationship between the two leaders has put the administration in a position to anticipate as many as four leader-level meetings this year.

The recent U.S.-Israeli strikes in Iran have introduced a volatile wild card.

For Xi, the strikes on Iran—following U.S. actions against the Maduro regime in Venezuela—heighten concerns about energy security. While China can technically replace Iranian barrels with Russian or Gulf supply, Beijing is alarmed by price spikes that could damage its already-stressed domestic economy.

“While China feels deeply uncomfortable with recent U.S. actions, they currently see enough value in stabilizing the relationship to continue supporting the president’s visit,” said Kurt Campbell, former deputy secretary of state under President Joe Biden and now chairman of the Asia Group. “However, they may re-evaluate if the current war starts to spin out of control.”

Campbell said Beijing is also “very much on watch” over a recent draft executive order that it views as a pretext for nationalizing U.S. elections based on alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 presidential election.

Beijing is sensitive to Trump’s recent calls for the Iranian people to rise up. And while Trump may view military action as a demonstration of strength, analysts said it may harden Beijing’s alignment with Russia.

The widening conflict threatens to choke off shipments of critical materials

Prolonged geopolitical tensions in the Middle East could disrupt South Korea’s chip industry, a top South Korean politician has warned.

The widening conflict threatens to choke off shipments of critical materials used in semiconductor production, and saddle chip makers with higher energy bills.

“The [South Korean] semiconductor industry expressed concerns that rising oil prices could lead to higher electricity costs domestically, which could ultimately undermine the price competitiveness of semiconductors,” said Kim Young-bae, a lawmaker with the ruling Democratic Party.

South Korea is a chip-making powerhouse, making up a significant portion of global supply and producing almost 75% of the world’s DRAM memory chips, estimates show.

Kim made the comments during a televised briefing after meeting with executives from chipmaking giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, as well as domestic trade associations.

He noted that South Korean semiconductor firms source key materials, such as helium, from the Middle East, and if supply is hindered that could hurt output.

“Logistics and transportation costs are likely to be the biggest issues rising from the situation in the Middle East,” Kim added, noting that South Korea relies on the region for 70% of its oil.

After getting requests from industry insiders, the lawmaker said that he is working on a proposal to deploy the country’s strategic oil reserves as needed in a way tailored for each industry’s needs.

BNP Paribas expects the South Korean government to introduce support measures to mitigate any economic shock from the current situation.

The kingdom’s ability to reroute oil flows relies on its East-West pipeline

Saudi Arabia is starting to shift crude exports to its Red Sea hub at Yanbu as disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz constrain Gulf shipments.

According to Kpler vessel-tracking data, about 10 million barrels of crude were loaded from the Red Sea’s Al-Muajjiz terminal in the first four days of March, implying a daily pace of roughly 2.5 million barrels.

The kingdom’s ability to reroute flows relies on the East-West pipeline, a roughly 750-mile system that transports crude from the eastern oil fields and processing centers near the Gulf to the Red Sea port of Yanbu on the west coast.

Kpler said at least three very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, in the Red Sea are signaling for Yanbu, including two waiting outside the port. Another four empty VLCCs are en route to Yanbu, with estimated arrivals between March 5 and 19.

State-controlled Saudi Aramco wasn’t immediately available for comment.

However, “the Red Sea system can only partially offset disruption in the Gulf,” analysts at Kpler said. “The Yanbu export terminals also operate at a smaller scale than Ras Tanura, limiting how much of the Kingdom’s export program can be redirected through the Red Sea system at any one time.”

While the East-West pipeline has a capacity of around 7 million barrels a day, Yanbu can load only about 4.3 million to 4.5 million barrels a day, according to the data provider. Saudi Arabia produced just over 10 million barrels a day of crude in February, the latest monthly report from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries showed.

The presence of the Iran-backed Houthi militants in the Red Sea, who severely disrupted shipping during the Israel-Hamas war, poses another risk.

Under normal conditions, Riyadh’s exports are heavily concentrated in the Middle East Gulf. Ras Tanura exported about 6 million barrels a day in the fourth quarter of last year, while Yanbu often handles below 1 million barrels a day, Kpler said.

The Ras Tanura loading terminal and refinery complex was hit by an Iranian drone on Wednesday, though officials said the strike caused no damage. The complex—the site of a major refinery and the world’s largest offshore oil-loading facility—was first attacked on Monday, temporarily halting operations after a drone strike sparked a small fire that was later contained, according to officials.

OpenAI topped $25 billion in annualized revenue as of the end of last month, according to a person familiar with the figure. That’s a 17% increase from the $21.4 billion in annualized revenue the company was generating at the end of the year, according to the person and a second person with knowledge of the figures.

OpenAI is still generating more revenue than its younger rival Anthropic, though the difference between the archrivals has been narrowing: Anthropic’s annualized revenue recently topped $19 billion, up nearly three times from the end of last year, and up 36% from just two weeks ago.

OpenAI calculates annualized revenue by multiplying the last four weeks’ revenue by 12. If OpenAI calculated the metric based on revenue spikes just in the last week, OpenAI’s annualized revenue would be roughly $30 billion, one of the people said.

Anthropic’s recent success in selling AI models that handle coding tasks has helped it quickly shrink its revenue gap with OpenAI. In 2025, OpenAI generated about three times more revenue than Anthropic.

While ChatGPT contributes the vast majority of OpenAI revenue, the company expects an increasing portion of its revenue will come from business customers as well as new products, such as advertising. OpenAI has been in talks with ad tech firm The Trade Desk on a partnership that could expand its advertising clients, for instance.

OpenAI’s coding agent Codex, meanwhile, quadrupled its weekly active users from the start of the year to 2 million at the end of last month, said the person. Anthropic’s rival product Claude Code has also grown rapidly in the past couple of months, boosting revenue, the company has said.

In recent years, both companies blew past the revenue projections they shared with investors. The recent figures suggest they will do so again this year, as businesses increase their spending on the technology, including for coding tasks.

The companies’ release of coding and other agents that automate white-collar tasks have rocked the equity markets in recent months, especially stocks of enterprise software firms that investors believe could be vulnerable as workers adopt AI tools.

While both companies recently projected they would each burn tens of billions of dollars over the next couple of years as they spend more to rent cloud servers and chips to develop their technology, the revenue growth surge could propel their respective initial public offerings as soon as this year. (OpenAI recently selected law firms for its proposed IPO, The Information reported.)

Both have also been negotiating with the Pentagon over military use of their AI, and their differing positions have spilled into public view. On Friday, after the Pentagon moved to cut ties with Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei said in an internal memo that the deal OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman struck with the agency was “safety theater” that didn’t resolve key questions about how the technology might be used in surveillance of Americans and to operate autonomous weapons, The Information reported.

If the Pentagon sticks with its decision, Anthropic could lose some revenue from federal government agencies.

OpenAI recently hiked its revenue forecasts for the next five years—with plans to generate as much as $284 billion in revenue in 2030—but it also raised its forecasts for cash burn, predicting it would spend $665 billion in server-related costs through the end of the decade. It doesn’t expect to turn cash flow positive until 2030, two years after Anthropic has projected it would generate cash. (See details of Anthropic’s projections here.)

The number of ChatGPT users grew to about 920 million weekly active users at the end of February, according to the person. That’s a gain of roughly 10 million from a few weeks earlier, though it’s still short of its goal of getting 1 billion users by the end of 2025. The company’s release last summer of GPT-5, which generated complaints from some users over its colder personality than its predecessor GPT-4o, appeared to contribute to the growth slowdown.

Google’s Gemini also has sparked concern inside OpenAI, which late last year declared a code red to refocus its energies on boosting the chatbot.