President Donald Trump said Chinese chief Xi Jinping would soon go to Washington, while business tensions are strengthened between the two biggest economies in the world.
Xi will arrive in the “not too far future,” said Trump on Monday when he attended a meeting of the board of directors at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, when he praised a series of recent visits by leaders from India, France, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Trump has intensified a commercial struggle with China since its return to functions, twice the general prices of coverage on imports from the Asian country. The president called on these movements an answer to Beijing’s failure to suppress the flow of illegal fentanyl and the chemical precursors used to do so.
THE Wall Street Journal Previously, American and Chinese officials discussed a possible “birthday summit” in June who would see the two leaders – who both have birthdays in the middle of the month – for the first time since Trump’s return to the White House. The American president has not detailed the specific calendar for the possible meeting.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Tuesday in Beijing that she had no information to provide on a potential Trump-Xe meeting.
Trump toosaidLast month, he spoke with XI, “probably within 24 hours”, while his initial 10% tariff hike was taking advantage of. This price of the price has passed without any public file of the two men who speak.
High Chinese and American leaders are generally turned into the other’s nations, a protocol that puts the burden on Trump to visit Beijing before welcoming his counterpart. While Xi went to California at the end of 2023, Joe Biden became the first American president from Jimmy Carter not to visit China during his duties.
The discussions between the two countries which would generally organize a meeting of leaders arestuck at lower levelsWith both parties in a dead end on how to proceed. Beijing said Washington had not described detailed measures that he expects from China on fentanyl that she was raising prices, according to people familiar with the problem. Trump’s team rejects this statement, according to a person familiar with the issue, who said that the White House had sent messages to China by diplomatic channels.
Republican senator Steve Daines, a member of the foreign relations committee, is expected to meet this weekend with a senior Chinese official and representatives of American companies in China, according to people familiar with the issue. Daines declared on social networks that one of the problems he will raise is “the flow of fatal fentanyl in our country”.
‘Big thank you’
China accused Trump ofUse of fentanyl as a pretextTo raise prices. An official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week said that Washington should offer a “big thank you” for Beijing’s work, repressing drug trafficking instead of slamming imports, and urged the Trump administration to resume talks.
China has implemented Reprisals, but these measures were more limited than his response to Trump’s commercial actions during his first mandate. After Trump has doubled the price on Chinese imports at 20% earlier this month, Beijing announced withdrawals of up to 15% on American agricultural products and prohibits trade with certain defense companies.
Trump said he was open to talks on the publication of an agreement, even if he intensifies the pressure on Beijing. In such discussions, the United States will want to approach more than fentanyl, according to a person familiar with the issue, which said that China’s help to create jobs in the American heart, guaranteeing the centrality of the dollar in world trade and the support of Xi to end the war in Ukraine would be on the agenda.
The implementation by Beijing of a trade agreement was also concluded during the first term of Trump, under which China promised to repress the theft of American trade secrets and to buy an additional $ 200 billion in American products. An American examination in this agreement is expected to wrap on April 1.
While Trump has often praised Xi, their relationship during his first mandate was derailed after the Pandemic Covid-19 pandemic blow, a global public health crisis that the American leader accused China.
The two men last radius In January, a few days before the American president was inaugurated for his second term, in a discussion which addressed trade relations, a potential sale of the US operations of the Tiktok application of Bytedance Ltd. and efforts to limit fentanyl traffic.
This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
