Chinese dictator Xi Jinping will arrive at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday for his first visit to Washington in 10 years. President Donald Trump, who visited Beijing in May, will be there to greet him. No matter how often Trump plays his particular style of foreign policy, it still baffles most in the American media.
With friends and allies, President Trump can be brutal. Shape up, he’ll tell them. Pull your weight. He’s hard on Republicans, NATO allies, and others precisely because they’re on his side and he wants them to do better. His insults and cajoling are sometimes cringeworthy, but he is employing a well-worn strategy.
With enemies and geopolitical foes, however, Trump is effusive in his praise and affection. This mystifies the Leftmedia, which has peddled the hoax that Trump is a stooge of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin for the last decade. Yet here too Trump is playing chess, of sorts. He heaps compliments on his opponents as a means of getting past their defenses. Xi is one of those foes.
What does Trump hope to accomplish with Xi this week?
Well, there are several broad issues where, let’s just say, the U.S. doesn’t see eye to eye with the ChiComs. Perhaps most pressing right now is artificial intelligence. China has a long history of shamelessly stealing American technology, and AI is no different. The anti-AI sentiment, including opposition to data centers, roiling the American political landscape these days could arguably be fueled by Chinese propaganda. Even if not, it plays to the ChiComs’ advantage.
Unrestrained by the niceties of Western democracy, the tyrannical government in Beijing can and will do what it wants on AI. If you don’t like it, well, remember the tanks running down protesters at Tiananmen Square.
Or consider the detention of Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy protester imprisoned for his political views. Many observers — including his godfather, Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn — want Trump to push for Lai’s release.
“I’ll get him out,” Trump has previously said. “He’ll be easy to get out.” We’ll see.
Back to AI, Trump opined, “We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world and, frankly, I want to keep it that way — because whoever wins AI wins.” On Monday, he took to Truth Social to insist again that the U.S. leads China on this front, and that he is “not going to stifle Growth, of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution, or the Internet, itself.”
Trade is obviously another issue. Trump has been complaining about trade with China for decades because the Chinese lie, cheat, and steal their way to every advantage. He did not start the trade war. His slew of tariffs aims to right these wrongs, but again, we’ll see whether Xi and Trump make any progress toward fair trade. Rare earths and semiconductors are chief points of contention.
By the way, the best way for the U.S. to win the competition is to lean into the free market. State-controlled economies will never prevail over free enterprise.
Meanwhile, the ChiComs have been colluding with Iran while the U.S. aims to stop the mad mullahs from gaining nuclear weapons. Iran sells oil to China and buys semiconductors for weapons. How much has China helped Iran kill Americans? Trump should ask Xi that question.
China’s alleged election interference may or may not come up. Trump certainly made a big deal about it in that blockbuster speech in July... and then we never heard another word about it. “Newly declassified documents show that over a period of years starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history — resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files,” the president said. Will he ask Xi to explain that?
Finally, the elephant in the room is Taiwan. Captain Brent Ramsey (U.S. Navy, retired) has a series on Taiwan that explores various angles of U.S. strategy. Suffice it to say here that it is in America’s strategic national security interests to reinforce the impression that we will defend Taiwan if China strikes.
Theatrics notwithstanding, Trump has been tougher on China than any president in recent decades. Here’s hoping he sticks to that plan in this meeting and future actions.
