In this Saturday, June 29, 2019, file photo, U.S. President Donald Trump, left, meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Four decades after the U.S. established diplomatic ties with communist China, the relationship between the two is at a turning point. Credit: AP/Susan Walsh
Trump has announced that he will nominate Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state and that Florida Rep. Mike Waltz will be his national security adviser. Both Republican lawmakers are noted China hawks.
The White House had been working for months to arrange the meeting with Xi, whose country is the United States’ most prominent economic and national security competitor.
For Xi, front of mind will be Trump’s campaign promise to impose 60% tariffs on Chinese imports. White House officials avoided commenting in detail about how Biden will approach conversations with Xi and other world leaders about Trump.
Those officials say Biden also will use the summits to press allies to keep up support for Ukraine as it tries to fend off Russia’s invasion and not lose sight on finding an end to the wars in Lebanon and Gaza. That includes bringing home hostages held by Hamas for more than 13 months.
Between the summits, Biden will visit the Amazon rainforest, the first such visit by a sitting U.S. president.
James Bosworth, founder of the Latin America-focused political consultancy Hxagon, said Biden will use one of his last big moments in the international spotlight “to reassure the world that transitions of power are normal for democracies.”
“Biden will get public applause and praise, even as world leaders nervously await the transition,” Bosworth said.
Biden’s meeting with Xi will likely be the most consequential moment during the American president’s time in South America.
It will be their first conversation since a phone call in April. They last met face to face on a California estate on the sidelines of last year’s APEC summit.
Biden has tried to maintain a steady relationship with Xi even as the U.S. administration repeatedly has raised concerns about what it sees as malign action by Beijing.
U.S. intelligence officials have assessed that China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry to use against Ukraine. The Biden administration last month imposed sanctions on two Chinese companies accused of directly helping Russia build long-range attack drones.
Tensions flared last year after Biden ordered the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon that traversed across the intercontinental United States. And the Biden administration has criticized Chinese military assertiveness toward Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan.
Sullivan said he expected Biden also would raise a U.S. investigation into an alleged Chinese hacking operation targeting cellphones used by Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, and people associated with Democrat Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
During the campaign, Trump spoke of his personal connection with Xi, which started out well during the Republican’s first term before becoming strained over disputes about trade and the origins of COVID-19.
In a congratulatory message to Trump, Xi called for the U.S. and China to manage their differences and get along in a new era, according to Chinese state media.
Biden finds himself in a position somewhat similar to when then-President Barack Obama traveled to Peru in 2016 for the annual APEC leaders gathering soon after Trump’s first White House victory.
World leaders peppered Obama with questions about what Trump’s surprise win would mean. Obama urged leaders to be patient and see how things would go under Trump, who ran on a protectionist, “America First” agenda.
“Obama got a lot of questions about Trump, and his message was to wait and see … because we didn’t know Donald Trump,” said Victor Cha, a National Security Council official in the George W. Bush administration. “Now we’re in a very different situation where we do know what the first Trump administration was like.”
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=6735ec1d9b774c9bb0c72485e2644626&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsday.com%2Fnews%2Fnation%2Fbiden-trump-apec-g20-latin-america-peru-m66367&c=10013000356126394215&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-11-13 23:22:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
