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The Trump administration is tempering expectations ahead of the president’s trip to China this week as the situation in Iran continues to play out.
Senior US officials previewed over the weekend a range of topics the two leaders are expected to cover — artificial intelligence, boards of trade and investment, and the Iran war — but stopped short of discussing formal agreements that might come from President Donald Trump’s sitdown with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. One senior US official shot down the notion that a major Chinese plan to invest in the US could be announced during the trip.
“There’s not a proposal out there for some massive investment,” the official said. “I know there’s been some press to that effect, and my sense is that folks who want that in the private sector were projecting that, because we haven’t had conversations about a major Chinese investment program. At this point, that has not been on the negotiating table.”
Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, Citi’s Jane Fraser, and a number of other US CEOs are expected to join Trump on the trip, Semafor reported last week. While there’s been talk of orders for Boeing planes and soybean sales, expectations are low for the kind of commercial fanfare that accompanied Trump’s trip to the Gulf last year.
“I don’t want to think about some big headline with the Chinese where I have really hot rhetoric, I say really tough things, but at the end of the day, do nothing,” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Semafor in an interview last month. “I’d much rather do what we’re doing now, which is we’re going to talk to the Chinese, because we live in this world together.”
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Trump, facing declining poll numbers at home, will arrive in Beijing on Wednesday evening weakened from the stalemate in the Iran war. While China has mostly stayed out of the fray publicly, the war will serve as a backdrop for the discussions.
Trump is expected to participate in a bilateral meeting with Xi on Thursday, according to White House press secretary Anna Kelly. The two will talk about “additional agreements” spanning sectors like aerospace, agriculture, and energy, with Xi expected to come to the US for a reciprocal visit later in the year, Kelly said.
On the topic of artificial intelligence, the US government official suggested any AI discussions would be preliminary in nature, saying the visit to China is an “opportunity” to “open up a conversation” and see whether “a channel of communication” should be established. Another senior US official emphasized that the US policy on Taiwan is not expected to change.
This week’s trip was initially scheduled for March, but Trump postponed it because of the Iran war. Asked why the trip was going ahead as scheduled, despite the ongoing conflict with Iran, the second senior US official responded: “I think the question would be, why wouldn’t he go on this trip at this point? I think clearly six weeks ago, we were in a bit more of an active situation.”