When President Trump meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping later Wednesday, he will be extending a hand to a leader that Washington and national security experts have identified as the biggest threat to American global dominance.
Trump’s main priorities in courting Xi are advancing a trade deal, securing American access to Chinese critical minerals, increasing Chinese purchases of U.S. agriculture and finalizing the Chinese sale of TikTok.
For Xi, reducing or eliminating U.S. tariffs and avoiding additional export restrictions on sensitive American technology are at the forefront, while also pushing for Trump to hew closer to Beijing’s position toward Taiwan.
Trump is projecting positivity ahead of his meeting with Xi, which will take place in Busan, South Korea, and marks the first time the two leaders have seen each other face-to-face in six years.
“That’s a big, big meeting, and I think it’s going to work out very well, actually. I think it’s going to be great for everybody,” Trump said at a dinner with business leaders Tuesday in Tokyo.
Republicans hawkish on China are working to reinforce their positions ahead of Trump’s minisummit with Xi. Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), the chair of the House Select committee on competition with China, warned Xi is unlikely to completely hand over control of TikTok to an independent American company.
“I believe Xi Jinping views this as a strategic asset,” he said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“That’s why he didn’t want to sell it to some of the other American companies that were interested in purchasing it. So as long as they’re involved, I think we have to recognize that TikTok, even an American version, still could be open to influence from the Chinese Communist Party.”
Other Republicans are pointing to Beijing’s willingness to restrict the export of rare earth minerals — critical for the U.S. — as reinforcing the true nature of Xi’s ambitions for global dominance.
“China has wielded its dominance of rare earth production as a geopolitical weapon many times before,” Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.) wrote in an op-ed for Newsweek last week.
“These new export controls are not simply a retaliatory measure in the U.S.-China trade war. They represent an aggressive new phase in a decades-long strategy to coerce the world into accepting Beijing’s critical minerals dominance.”
Trump’s team argues it succeeded in getting Xi to retreat from his export control threats with the power of tariffs, but regional experts point to China’s willingness to weaponize rare earths as being a key weakness for the president.
“I do think that he [Trump] believes that the United States is in a position of strength, but he must also recognize that China has weaponized its rare earths, and that that is almost a chokehold on not just the American companies in many industries, but also around the world,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program.
But she said the U.S. does have significant leverage given China’s reliance on U.S.-produced software, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, as well as aircraft engines and parts.
And even as Trump has wielded tariffs on allies as a bullying tactic in trade talks, his three-country tour through Southeast Asia — Malaysia, Japan and South Korea — has served to reinforce partnerships with allies.
Trump, speaking Tuesday with Japan’s newly elected Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, offered resolute U.S. support for the alliance with Tokyo.
“I want to just let you know anytime you have any question, any doubt, anything you want, any favors you need, anything I can do to help Japan, we will be there,” the president said. “We are an ally at the strongest level.”
And Trump’s trade deal with Malaysia, referencing access to critical minerals, is being welcomed as a key element in efforts to deepen alliances with countries that are pulled into China’s orbit.
“There are provisions in some of those agreements where countries have basically pledged to not do things that would be harmful to the United States, in other words, to not stand with China,” Glaser said.
But there’s anxiety in Taipei — and among U.S. allies on the front line of Chinese aggression — over whether Trump will maintain the status quo of the U.S. position toward the sovereign, democratic island that Beijing seeks to subsume.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that “no one is contemplating” walking away from Taiwan in exchange for favorable trade terms with Beijing.
Trump and Xi’s meeting is taking place on — generally — neutral ground in South Korea.
But the stakes are high for a trade deal, and the meeting will likely serve as a key test of the direction U.S.-China ties are heading.
“I think the president loves deals, and if there’s a deal to be had tomorrow, I think that he would take it,” said Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security with the Atlantic Council.
But he warned that any short-term bargain reached in the informal summit is a far cry from the predictable and stable bilateral ties that private industry and senior business executives crave.
“I think this is a new Cold War — biggest national security threat we’ve ever faced. And so, I think we really need a more comprehensive economic strategy for China that includes a harder derisking, protecting ourselves from Chinese unfair trade practices, hitting back with tariffs where they are systematically cheating on the global trading system,” Kroenig said.
“And maybe there is some room for continued trade, but I think the central economic issue in the U.S.-China relationship is not how many soybeans China is buying.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday getting China to increase purchases of American soybeans is a priority, a trade the nation halted this year in favor of soybeans from Brazil and Argentina.
Other key areas where Republicans are sounding the alarm are for Trump to press Xi on the release of Americans unjustly detained in China and Beijing’s escalating crackdown on religious freedom and civil rights advocates.
“When you next meet with General Secretary Xi Jinping, we respectfully ask that you personally raise the cases of Americans unjustly detained—or held as hostages to punish Americans or extract political or commercial concessions,” Moolenaar, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) wrote to Trump on Oct. 22.
“The CCP [Chinese Communist Party] is the world’s largest hostage-taker. It uses detentions and exit bans to punish and censor Americans, gain leverage over U.S. businesses, and pressure changes in U.S. policy.”
And on Monday, Sens. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Todd Young (R-Ind.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) and Sullivan introduced legislation that would sanction Chinese officials for persecutions against religious minorities.
“China’s disdain for religious freedom is not new. It is an ongoing and brutal pattern of abuse that must be met with steadfast American strength,” Budd said in a statement.
But critics are warning that Trump is entering the talks from a position of weakness.
“This is an administration whose entire playbook is based on bullying and bluster—tactics that are useless when brute force is ineffective,” wrote Damian Murphy, senior vice president of national security and international policy for the Center for American Progress (CAP), with Michael Clark, a research associate with CAP.
“As a result, it has systematically undermined the true sources of U.S. competitive advantage, at the expense of Americans’ security and prosperity and to the benefit of China.”
Clark and Murphy, who recently served as staff director for the Democratic chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued that Trump has undermined alliances to combat China by antagonizing partners with tariffs and threats to withdraw American security safeguards.
Trump’s chaotic trade policies, alongside declaring war on climate change and abdicating positions on bodies at the United Nations, provided Beijing an opportunity to present itself as “a reliable global partner and leader,” they wrote in an article published Monday.
“He has alienated allies, abandoned global leadership, gutted strategic investments, and rejected the world’s top talent,” Murphy and Clark wrote about Trump.
“Each of these decisions has done more to advance China’s strategic goals than anything Beijing could have hoped to achieve on its own, and it leaves the United States less secure, less respected, more alone, and weak.”
Source: The Hill
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