ON THE campaign trail, Donald Trump suggested there would be no state dinners on his watch for “the heads of China” who were “ripping us left and right!” He proposed to just “take ‘em to McDonald’s and go back to the negotiating table!” Yet on April 6th the president will welcome President Xi Jinping to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, for a two-day visit which will include no soggy burgers and perhaps little discussion of the US-China trade imbalance that so irks Mr Trump.
The unconfrontational reception Mr Xi can expect mainly reflects the president’s slow-dawning recognition that governing is trickier than he once assumed. China’s response to the clumsy trick he attempted to play shortly after his election, in which Mr Trump took a call from the president of Taiwan and then suggested America’s “One China” policy might up for negotiation, was emblematic of a chastening re-education for the president. Mr Xi refused to speak to Mr Trump until he clarified that the policy which has defined US-China relations for four decades was in fact not in danger. Mr Trump duly did so, Mr Xi rewarded him with a phone call and America’s president has sounded more respectful of China ever...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2oJJj0b
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