Trump brushes aside Taiwan concerns ahead of Xi meetBEIJING, May 12: A year ago, U.S. President Donald Trump predicted that towering trade tariffs would bring America's main economic rival to heel.
He heads to China this week with that ambition blunted by court rulings, narrowing his goals to a few deals on beans, beef and Boeing jets, and enlisting China's help to resolve his unpopular Iran war, political analysts say.
The modest expectations for Trump's May 14-15 meetings with Xi Jinping - the first since they paused a bruising trade war in October - underscore how Trump's bombastic approach has failed to deliver an advantage ahead of the talks, according to analysts.
Trump "kind of needs China more than China needs him," said Alejandro Reyes, a professor specialising in Chinese foreign policy at the University of Hong Kong.
"He needs a kind of foreign policy victory: a victory that shows that he is looking to ensure stability in the world and that he's not just disrupting global politics," Reyes added.
Since their last brief meeting at an airbase in South Korea where Trump suspended triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods and Xi backed away from choking global supplies of rare earths, China has quietly sharpened its economic pressure toolkit aimed at Washington.
Trump, meanwhile, has been preoccupied fighting US court rulings against his tariffs and a war with Iran that has sapped his approval ratings ahead of November's midterm elections.
AFP adds, the White House said Trump will bring along top US executives including his former nemesis Elon Musk and Apple's Tim Cook for a trip expected to focus heavily on the US president's hopes to ramp up trade.
China said it hoped to achieve greater stability between the world's two largest economies during the visit lasting Wednesday through Friday, the first by a US president since Trump went in 2017.
Asked if the United States should keep selling weapons to Taiwan, a key irritant for Beijing, Trump did not answer directly but said on Monday: "I'm going to have that discussion with President Xi."
"President Xi would like us not to, and I'll have that discussion. That's one of the many things I'll be talking about," he told reporters in the Oval Office.
Trump, after referencing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, said of Taiwan, "I don't think it'll happen."
"I think we'll be fine. I have a very good relationship with President Xi. He knows I don't want that to happen," he said.
But Trump also noted that the United States was "very, very far away" compared with China.
When asked for a response to Trump's remarks, Taiwan's foreign ministry vowed to "continue to strengthen cooperation" with the United States, the island's main security backer, and "build effective deterrence capabilities in order to jointly maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait." "REITERS, AFP
