Deals over principles: Trump’s China gambit in the shadow of Iran
Can the two great powers arrive at an agreement at the upcoming bilateral summit in Beijing?
WHEN US President Donald Trump touches down in Beijing on Mar 31, he will arrive not just as a dealmaker, but as a president who has, in the span of weeks, overseen the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro.
It is a remarkable backdrop for what was supposed to be a trade summit – and it raises a question that neither Washington nor Beijing seems eager to answer: Can two great powers negotiate the price of soybeans and Boeing jets while one of them is reordering the Middle East by force?
The three-day visit, scheduled from Mar 31 to Apr 2, will be the first official trip to Beijing by a sitting US president since Trump’s previous visit in 2017.
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