US President Donald Trump on Monday said he is seeking to \u200bdelay a highly anticipated trip to China in early April by about a month because of the Iran war.<\/p>\n
“We’ve requested that we \u200cdelay it a month or so,” Trump told reporters at the White House.<\/p>\n
China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Trump’s requested delay in his scheduled March 31-April 2 trip to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping underscores how the Iran war has upended his foreign policy agenda.<\/p>\n
It also risks magnifying tensions between Washington and Beijing, as the Mideast crisis has joined trade and Taiwan among the spectrum of issues separating the world’s two biggest economies.<\/p>\n
Trump’s request for assistance with Iran<\/p>\n
Iran has \u200bresponded to joint US-Israeli attacks by threatening to fire on vessels moving through the strait, through which its own ships continue to transit at \u2060near-normal rates. Trump has called on numerous nations, including China, to help ships safely transit the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s oil \u200btransits on a daily basis.<\/p>\n
Trump’s request for assistance so far has largely been rebuffed. China, which imported around 12 million barrels of oil daily in the first two months of 2026, most in the world, has not directly responded to his request.<\/p>\n
“The president looks forward to visiting China,” spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters. “The dates may be moved. As commander-in-chief, it’s his number-one priority right now to ensure the continued success of this operation, Epic Fury. So we’ll keep you posted on the dates as soon as we can.”<\/p>\n
Read:\u00a0Trump slams allies over rejection of Hormuz request, as Iran and Israel trade airstrikes<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Trump told \u200bthe Financial Times he might postpone the meeting if China did not help unblock the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
Iranian crude oil has kept flowing through the Strait of \u200bHormuz at a near-normal pace, a\u00a0Reuters\u00a0review of shipping data shows, though overall exports from the Middle East have dropped more than 60% since the war started. Most of \u200cIran’s oil \u2060exports go to China, according to US Energy Department data.<\/p>\n
Travelling abroad ‘may not be optimal’ during war<\/p>\n
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday that Trump may need to delay the trip due to coordinating the war effort, not because of the request that China help police the strait or because of any trade disagreements.<\/p>\n
“The President wants to remain in DC to coordinate the war effort,” Bessent said. “Traveling abroad at a time like this may not be optimal.”<\/p>\n
Beijing has not \u200bspecified dates for Trump’s visit and \u200bnormally does not detail Xi’s schedule \u2060far in advance.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Middle Eastern oil exports drop more than 60% on Iran war PHOTO: REUTERS<\/p>\n
Preparations for Trump-Xi meeting move ahead<\/p>\n
Preparations for the meeting at its originally scheduled date are ongoing. On Monday, Bessent was in Paris for talks with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng aimed at teeing up trade and other agreements for Trump \u200band Xi in Beijing.<\/p>\n
In those talks, which began on Sunday, the Chinese showed openness to potential additional purchases \u200bof U.S. agricultural goods \u2060including poultry, beef and non-soybean row crops, one source said before the second day of meetings. They also discussed the flow of rare earth minerals largely controlled by China and new approaches to manage trade and investment between the countries.<\/p>\n
Read more:\u00a0US intelligence warned Trump Iran could hit Gulf allies, contradicting \u2018surprise\u2019 claim<\/p>\n
Spokespersons for the US Treasury and the U.S. Trade Representative’s office declined to characterize the talks.<\/p>\n
“Head \u2060of state \u200bdiplomacy plays an irreplaceable role in providing strategic guidance to China-US relations,” said Lin Jian, \u200ba Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, when asked about Trump’s remarks over the weekend during a regular press conference. Both sides are communicating about the trip, Lin added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US President Donald Trump on Monday said he is seeking to \u200bdelay a highly anticipated trip to China in early April by about a month because of the Iran war. “We’ve requested that we \u200cdelay it a month or so,” Trump told reporters at the White House. China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2375,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions\/2375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}