The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump takes the world stage

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

President Trump heads to the United Nations General Assembly this week as the organization welcomes world leaders to discuss their work. We preview what he will discuss, as well as what is on the agenda for a state visit from China's president, Xi Jinping, later this week.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, and White House correspondents Emily Feng & Franco Ordoñez.This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

It's going to be a busy few days on the international stage for President Trump. He's addressing the United Nations. He's meeting with China's leader Xi Jinping. Oh, there also seems to be a deal about Greenland. Let's go around the world in 20 minutes. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.

I'm Emily Vang. I cover the White House. And I'm Frank Oudnius. I also cover the White House. And, Emily, I want to start with Greenland. There was a deal on Friday night that President Trump announced on social media related to the autonomous Danish territory. He said, quote, the United States of America has entered into an agreement with the Kingdom of Denmark and Greenland that gives the United States permanent

control over security and all other needs in Greenland, completely addressing all of our many U.S. concerns. End quote. Greenland is a place that U.S. President has had his eyes on for quite a while. What else can you tell us about this deal? The answer is not much. The announcement came out in a flurry of true social posts that he was publishing throughout, Friday afternoon, Friday evening. There has been no public copy of the agreement. Denmark has had a statement but not confirmed that the agreement is binding. What we do know is that according to Trump, the agreement lasted into perpetuity. It would make the U.S., the guarantor, essentially, of Greenland, this territory's security, and that if any adversary or other nation wanted to

set up a military presence on Greenland, it would have to get U.S. approval first. Got it. But this is not like the United States taking over Greenland. as was kind of feared in some way a few months ago, right? So Denmark has come out with a statement. They said this does not cede any sovereignty. Got it. And privately, I think Danish politicians have been optimistic about this. You know, it's not set in stone just yet.

But this is effectively, potentially the status quo of Greenland right now, which is the U.S. has been the assumed security guarantor of Greenland and Denmark. And we have to see whether this means an increased U.S. military presence there, if at all. What do you make of this, Franco? Yeah, I mean, I think this is very typical Trump. I mean, Trump is so into making announcements, announcing some good news. You know, obviously there's been so much bad news going on over the last few weeks. Here's a chance to deliver some good news. And on the Danes perspective, I imagine, it's a lot more pleasant to have this announced ahead of Unga instead of maybe or perhaps or after. It definitely takes this issue off the table. That's the United Nations General Assembly, which is happening this week in New York, yeah. Absolutely. So for Trump, this kind of like tables this issue or at least moves it aside. And I think the rest of Europe, not only the Danes, but the rest of you are maybe breathing a little bit of a sigh of relief. I do want to talk about Unga, the United Nations General Assembly. A lot of world leaders are going to make speeches this week. President Trump is expected to make a speech tomorrow. He has obviously ruffled a lot of feathers in the United States.

the international community this year. Do we have any sense on what he's going to say or the message that he's going to be giving to the United Nations? Yeah, we know a little bit, and I can assure you that the world leaders are definitely going to be watching this speech very closely. Not only has Trump ruffled feathers with allies, he's been ruffling feathers with this speech year after year after year. If you remember, I think it was 2018 when Trump actually boasted that his administration had accomplished more than any other in American history and leaders actually started laughing during the speech, or when he threatened to wipe North Korea off the face of this earth, or even last year when he blasted the UN for not living up to its potential.

So a lot of attention is going to be on this speech. And I can tell you from most recent conversations with the White House that Trump is expected to basically paint himself as a peacemaker, you know, highlighting the peace deals that were announced that he helped broker around the world. He's also going to defend his Iran policy, which will be very, very interesting because he's going to be doing that during his speech while there will be Iranian leaders in the room, including the Iranian president, who is also going to be giving a speech the following day on Wednesday. Awkward. A little bit awkward, right. And I guess that's what I'm wondering is how much, when President Trump came into office,

I think he started with a sort of divisive message for the rest of the world and with U.S. allies. And I'm wondering how much the Iran conflict has played into that. I mean, how has that strained these other relationship with U.S. allies? Very much so. I mean, the relationship has only gotten more and more of Iran. As we know, we've reported many, many times. The U.S. did not consult with traditional allies before, you know, before the U.S. and Israel kind of attacked Iran. and they've been kind of kept out the loop for so long.

So that has already added to challenges that the U.S. has had with traditional allies. Trump has always made clear that he doesn't have the same affinity for those. And that, you know, dates back to the first administration. So you have in the room basically, you know, a group that's going to be kind of cool on Trump himself. Because these allies basically are really starting to head. against Washington. You know, these are countries that for many, many years heavily relied on Washington do. And frankly, they still do, but they're starting to pull back both militarily and economically

because of all that uncertainty about U.S. policy. And they're basically turning to each other in other like-minded countries. I mean, the big example most recently is Canada and it's moved to, you know, closer to the European Union. Right. So these meetings at the UN, we're going to be watching speeches from Trump and from other world leaders. They also involve a lot of these bilateral conversations, conversations between the United States and other countries kind of on the sidelines. What are we watching for there? Yeah, I mean, I think that's where the real action is going to be. The United Nations General Assembly and the UN Security Council have really been weakened over the years. You know, so these meetings are largely where a lot of the business is going to get done. I mean, Trump is going to meet with Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky, the British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, as well as Gulf leaders and Venezuela's interim president, Delci Rodriguez, which is particularly fascinating, considering she was the VP under Nicholas Maduro, who is being held in a detention center not too far from the General Assembly. Oh, wow. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, that's crazy.

So, you know, just to your point, I mean, that's just fascinating. But to your point, here you have kind of a weekend United Nations, a weekend General Assembly. And it's kind of funny that so much of this business is happening on the sideline. So it's kind of like Unga is more the location for bilateral meetings where Trump likes to do things because he's, as we've reported many times, he really appreciates bilateral where he can go one on one and have more transactional kind of diplomacy. Are we expecting anything on the Russia-Ukraine front this week? Ukraine and Russia is going to be a huge issue. I mean, that's part of the reason why Trump is meeting with Zelensky. The big question with Zelensky, Putin is not going to be there, but the big question with Zelensky is Trump has been putting more and more pressure on Zelensky over the last few weeks to stop bombing Russian oil infrastructure, particularly diesel fuel infrastructure facilities. So that is something that Trump has really been harping on. So I would anticipate that we're going to hear more of that, kind of more of that pressure cooker, that pressure on Zelensky. I'm always kind of skeptical anytime a big announcement comes out about progress. That said, you know, certainly, you know, Trump continues to say that he's meeting with Putin and Putin wants to make a deal. But again, the proof will be with the pudding. Yeah. And it's so it's notable Putin's not coming. It's also notable that Trump is heading into. Ungah a couple days after he has signed this Lindsay Graham Russia sanctions law that was championed by the late Senator Graham. And it targets Russia's energy sector in particular. It personally

sanctions Putin. And it also allows the U.S., the president in particular, to sanction the top five buyers of Iranian oil, which include India and China. China's leaders also not going to be at Ungah. So it's going to be interesting how that legislation has any effect at all, given that the White House has really held off on asking China to help out. with Russia sanctions and Iran sanctions. Okay. Let's leave it there and let's talk more China after the break. And we're back. So, Emily, early in the week, President Trump giving this speech before the UN General Assembly. A couple days later, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is coming to the White House.

What else can you tell us about what we're expecting in that visit? Trump is going to personally greet Xi Jinping when he lands in the U.S. at Joint Base Andrews. This is pretty big. I mean, it shows how much Trump, uh, find. This visit important. This honor was not bestowed upon him when he went to Beijing. It was the second in command, basically, in China who greeted him at the tarmac. Melania Trump and President Trump are going to welcome Xi in at the White House on Thursday. They're going to have a military flyover, which is also something that Trump didn't get. There had been this rhetoric of perfect reciprocity that former and current U.S. officials were telling me was the organizing principle

of this visit, you know, that like the U.S. was not going to cede anything more to China than what President Trump got when he went to Beijing in the spring. But already we're seeing in the announced ceremonial details that Xi Jinping of China is going to get quite a lot of pomp and circumstance from the U.S. I can't think of a single example of President Trump going to JBA to meet a world leader. And I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but I just want to say that because it speaks to how rare it is, including the first or the second administration. Well, tell me more about what are we supposed to take away from that in terms of how President Trump is viewing this visit? He clearly feels like he has a special relationship with Xi Jinping and has made statements to the

press to the effect of he is somehow more respected by the Chinese leader and somehow that's going to translate into geopolitical or trade wins for the U.S. I've been told to expect much more symbolism and a general direction and how the U.S.-China relationship is going to go in the next couple of months rather than very concrete commitments from both countries. But they're going to talk about some nitty-gritty stuff, like each side. is expected to offer tariff reductions on about $30 billion worth of goods. This was agreed on when Trump went to Beijing in the spring. There might be some extension of a rare earth's truce. Rare earths are these things that China mostly makes and the U.S. really needs and tech and defense

products. And they're going to touch upon artificial intelligence. There were talks between the Treasury Department and the Ministry of Commerce in China over the weekend in New York. And so that's setting the stage for more dialogue between the two countries. And if this visit, it goes well, I would expect, and the Chinese have been pushing the U.S. hard on this, I would expect President Trump to then go to the APEC meeting. This is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Xinjiang, southern China in November. You call this a sort of dialogue or one step as part of a broader dialogue. Are we expecting? Should we be expecting anything huge to come from this meeting? The most substantive thing would be this rare earth's truce. And my reporting on

this shows China, which threatened to cut off all rare exports to the U.S. last year and then backed off on that, that China actually offered an extension of that truce until the end of Trump's term in 2009. But there's been so much distrust and suspicion that the Chinese would actually hold up that end of the truce, that the U.S. has rejected that and counter offered a six-month extension, which the Chinese don't find very stable whatsoever. So there's still talking about that, but that would be the single most consequential thing coming out of this visit. And they're supposed to be maybe two more in-person meetings for the rest of the calendar year between Chechen Ping and Trump. So this is being framed as one of several conversations the two men are having.

I mean, it's also important to note what may not be discussed in this meeting because Iran is a huge issue and support, the Chinese support for Iran is going to be a massive deal. I mean, it was only a few weeks ago that Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, announced this new program that they were going to go after sanction third-party countries that were doing business with Iran. And the big question was whether Chinese banks would continue to do business with Iran. And the looming question was whether Trump would actually push that issue with Xi Jinping. I think there's a lot of skepticism whether do that. And we're talking about all this pomp and circumstance and like the rolling out of the red carpet. I'm not sure Trump is going to want to, you know, touch such a, you know, tense issue. But

if he doesn't, there will be questions about that. There's also this other issue that's come up related to Iran and China, right, which is the question of whether Chinese intelligence was given to Iran that helped target American forces. I guess I'm just trying to read out when I hear about the welcome that the Chinese president is being given and then I hear all these tension points. I guess I'm feeling a little bit of contradiction. I'm just trying to read exactly what the vibes are right now between the United States and China. There is a lot of contradiction in the relationship. And to be honest, there's a lot of

contradiction on this administration's approach to China on any number of issues, whether it's technology competition or this war in Iran. Publicly, the vice president praised China in a way for at least not being the ones shooting people. I'm paraphrasing here. While also China has been the economic lifeline for Iran and perhaps even provided intelligence to Iran. So there's a lot of tension in this, but the public messaging is both leaders from the U.S. and China really want this visit to go well. It's also notable to me that Xi Jinping is making one stop only, and that's in D.C., and he's not going to the U.N. General Assembly in New York. My understanding was that when this summit was proposed, the timing was chosen, so maybe Xi Jinping could go to Ungo?

It seems like that. I mean, putting them both in the same week, it's kind of odd to me. But two things happened. One was, again, the U.S. insisted at the time on perfect reciprocity. So Trump only went to Beijing, therefore, she should only come to Washington, D.C. And the second was China doesn't prioritize multilateral forums like the United Nations as much anymore. And so I think this shows, as Franco has made this point before, that the geopolitical gravity of the UN Security Council has been diminished. And that was one of the reasons why the Chinese may have said, all right, this is not one of our priorities. I will note if this summit goes well and Trump does go to southern China in November, the main leaders in the room are going to be President Trump, Xi Jinping of China, and Vladimir Putin of Russia, who is going to the APEC summit. What would we? But not coming to the U.N. What would be? I mean, that's like a great teaser for like what would we be expecting, I guess. Tell me a little bit more about what that could look like or what could be discussed then.

A meeting of the minds and a reshaping of an alternative. world order, I don't know. Okay. Yeah, the big topic of that will be the spheres of influence around the globe. Nothing big to discuss there. All right, well, we can leave it there.

I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Emily Fang. I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.