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?
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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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