US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing in May after delaying an earlier summit because of the war against Iran.<\/p>\n
Trump said he was looking forward to the \u201cmonumental\u201d trip, which was originally due to take place at the end of March, and would host Xi and his wife in Washington later this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy meeting with the Highly Respected President of China, President Xi Jinping, which was originally\u00a0postponed\u00a0due to our military operation in Iran, has been rescheduled, and will take place in Beijing on May 14th and 15th,\u201d Trump said on his Truth Social network.<\/p>\n
Trump said US and Chinese officials were \u201cfinalizing preparations\u201d for the \u201chistoric\u201d Beijing and Washington visits. \u201cI look very much forward to spending time with President Xi in what will be, I am sure, a Monumental Event,\u201d Trump added.<\/p>\n
The White House had announced the new dates shortly before Trump\u2019s social media post. Trump had been set to travel to Beijing between March 31 and April for the first time in his second term, for a summit aimed at resetting trade ties between the world\u2019s two largest economies.<\/p>\n
Read:\u00a0Trump postpones trip to Beijing as Iran war delays China reset as Iran war delays China reset<\/p>\n
The Chinese and US presidents met in South Korea in October on the sidelines of a regional summit, and agreed a truce in the trade war sparked by Trump\u2019s sweeping global tariffs.<\/p>\n
But Trump said on March 16 that he had asked China to postpone the meeting while he deals with the war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of the war I want to be here, I have to be here, I feel. And so we\u2019ve requested that we delay it a month or so,\u201d Trump told reporters at the time.<\/p>\n
‘Do the math’<\/p>\n
The White House remained coy as to whether the formal rescheduling of the visit meant Trump expected the\u00a0war with Iran, one of China\u2019s closest geopolitical allies, to end by that time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve always estimated approximately four to six weeks (for the length of military operations against Iran), so you could do the math on that,\u201d Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt added.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Xi understood that it\u2019s very important for the president to be here throughout these combat operations right now. He understood obviously the request to postpone and accepted it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But analysts have suggested China will be in a stronger position to extract concessions from Trump when he finally visits. His decision last month to join Israel in strikes on Iran has plunged the Middle East into violence, pushed energy prices to years-long highs and seeded fears of global supply shortages due to Iran\u2019s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
Read More:\u00a0All roads lead to Beijing<\/p>\n
With Trump struggling to define how the intervention will end and traditional allies reluctant to back him, the US leader may come to China needing a diplomatic win.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s weakened position could help Beijing argue for deeper tariff cuts and limit Washington\u2019s ability to push for change on other trade issues like access to critical minerals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing in May after delaying an earlier summit because of the war against Iran. Trump said he was looking forward to the \u201cmonumental\u201d trip, which was originally due to take place at the end of March, and would …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2809","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\/2809","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=2809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2816,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809\/revisions\/2816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}