President Trump will meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping Thursday in what will be his most important and consequential meeting with a foreign leader so far. Not only does Xi lead a major regional and world power, with a population of nearly 1.4 billion and an economic output that competes with the United States as the largest in the world. On the campaign trail, China represented for Trump our country’s chief economic rival, and there’s ample evidence to suggest the People’s Republic is our top security and geopolitical rival, too.
The president’s view of this week’s 24-hour summit with Xi at Mar-a-Lago, says a senior administration official, is a “first step to building a constructive, results-oriented relationship” between the United States and China. At the surface level, the White House says it hopes to work with China on the challenges in the Pacific region. But there are also hints Trump is prepared to get tough with Xi where China has been insufficiently tough on bad actors like North Korea and bullying toward American allies like South Korea.
Take the issue of North Korea’s nuclear program. “The clock has now run out and all options are on the table,” said the senior administration official. Options may include secondary sanctions on China, which has had close diplomatic ties with Pyongyang and props up almost the entirety for the hermit nation’s economy.
Capitol Hill Hawks Advising Administration on China
That’s certainly the hope of some Republicans on Capitol Hill who have been advising the administration to take a harder line with China over its close diplomatic ties with the North Korean regime. One such lawmaker is Colorado senator Cory Gardner, who has advised Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on North Korea and the broader U.S. Asian policy. The administration, Gardner says, is listening.
“I think they agree with the need for a long-term strategy,” Gardner told me. “The administration is very serious and has the desire to push China into a place of action and away from the situation China seems to be in right now, which is measured reluctance” on stopping the North Korean missile program.
If there’s one concern Senate Republican hawks have, it’s that the understaffed Trump administration won’t have enough manpower to properly implement and defend new and controversial policies. “We’ve got to have people around Rex Tillerson who can fulfill the strategy they laid out,” Gardner said.
A Change Is Coming on Syria?
President Trump made waves Wednesday during a joint press conference at the White House with King Abdullah II of Jordan in which he said the latest chemical attack by the Assad regime “crossed a lot of lines.”
“When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal…that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line,” Trump said.
That’s a reference to President Barack Obama’s 2012 charge that if Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people in that country’s civil war, the United States would respond with military action. Assad did use chemical weapons in 2013 on civilians in rebel-controlled areas outside Damascus—but the Obama administration balked at military operations.
Trump’s Tuesday statement also referenced the red line as it denounced the attack. The trajectory of Trump’s public statements, along with suggestions from administration officials like UN ambassador Nikki Haley that U.S. action may be forthcoming, tracks with what I’m hearing from the White House: there will be some kind of change to the current, nebulous administration policy on Syria. What that means—military action, increased sanctions on Assad’s allies in Moscow and Tehran—is unknown at this point.
Obamacare Repeal 2.0 Stalled
NBC News reports that the Trump administration’s efforts with Republican leadership to restart the repeal of Obamacare through the American Health Care Act have not produced a new compromise in time to beat the congressional recess. Here’s NBC:
Song of the Day
“Cherub Rock,” the Smashing Pumpkins.
