Andrew Harding: ‘President Trump Enters Beijing with a Lot of Leverage’ for this Week’s Talks with Pres. Xi

EXCERPT:

HARDING: “My expectations are that the president and Chairman Xi will have a compliance check on the U.S.-China relationship rather than make any major breakthroughs that will change the long-term trajectory of these two countries’ relations. I think President Trump enters Beijing with a lot of leverage. Since the last time these two leaders met in October of last year, we’ve seen the United States remove Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela and a successful Operation Epic Fury in Iran, notably both of those countries have been strong partners and allies of China. So I think the president has been able to demonstrate American might coming up to this summit. So I think there’s going to be discussions about what was previously agreed in October, looking at different tariff or economic activities, but also potentially look at new emerging issues such as artificial intelligence, like you mentioned, trade and tariffs, but also perhaps more of a contentious point could be on Iran. So there will be these discussions, there’ll be more of a checkpoint and compliance for potential troops to continue, but nothing major is going to change how this relationship is developing over time.”