Brian, welcome back.
How was your trip?
It was wild.
It was a crazy few days.
We landed on a Friday and it just carried in for 72 hours of pure nonstop work.
We did not stop working.
It was nuts.
Our colleague Brian Schwartz covers economic policy,
and he spent the weekend in Geneva, Switzerland.
where trade negotiations between the U.S. and China were taking place.
So the United States and China were meeting, really officially at least,
for the first time to talk about this ongoing trade war between both countries.
It was a big deal going into it just for the fact that they were having these talks.
But beyond the fact that the two delegations were meeting, Brian didn't know much.
The Trump administration would determine to keep these meetings a secret outside of the fact that they were happening in Switzerland.
It wasn't even entirely clear based on their one-line announcement of their meetings with China
if this was even going to be in Geneva itself.
That is how secret this was.
So I decided the first day of talks on that Saturday to stake out the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel very early in the morning.
Brian was on the lookout for U.S.