First published: Prospectmagazine.co.uk, 3/04/2017
If the US president expects significant economic climb-downs this week, he’ll be disappointed
Later this week, on 6th-7th April, Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Unlike previous meetings between the leaders of these two countries, which tended to be flagged a long time in advance, this one was confirmed only late last week. This suggests that the bar for a successful meeting has been set pretty low, and for good reason. US-Chinese relations are in any case frostier than they have been for a long time, the US side is being managed by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has no experience of dealing with China, and the US, itself, currently has no China policy.
It is very likely that Trump will want to convey a different message to the Chinese President from the deferential, almost sycophantic one delivered by his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when he met Xi Jinping very recently. If the last few days of tweets are anything to go by, Trump’s posture will not go down well. He has anticipated a “very difficult meeting” and insisted that the US can no longer tolerate “massive trade deficits and job losses.”….Read more:
