On today's podcast:
1) US President Donald Trump held back-to-back calls with the leaders of China and Japan, as escalating tensions over Taiwan threaten to derail his weeks-old trade truce with Beijing. Trump’s hour-long conversation with President Xi Jinping on Monday marked their first contact since Japan’s new prime minister enraged Beijing by suggesting her nation’s troops could be drawn into a Taiwan crisis. Xi told his US counterpart Taiwan’s return to China was an “integral part of the postwar international order,” in a call the Chinese Foreign Ministry later said was “initiated by the US.”
2) A US official is in Abu Dhabi for meetings with a Russian delegation as President Donald Trump cited progress on his peace proposal and Moscow and Ukraine carried out airstrikes overnight.
3) Nvidia shares fell on a report that Meta is in talks to spend billions on Google’s AI chips, suggesting the internet search leader is making headway in efforts to rival the industry’s bestselling AI accelerator. Meta is in discussions to use the Google chips — known as tensor processing units, or TPUs — in data centers in 2027, The Information reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the talks. Meta also may rent chips from Google’s cloud division next year, the news outlet said.