Trump-Xi Summit at Beijing To Focus on Opening Strait of Hormuz

President Trump flies to Beijing this week in hopes of a deal with Communist China’s president, Xi Jinping, to end the Iran war and settle disputes on trade and tariffs. The president may not get what he wants but is counting that China’s reliance on nearly half its oil on tankers via the Strait of Hormuz, now blockaded, will open a vein for negotation.“China will try to avoid appearing to pressure Iran in a way that would seem to support the United States,” a senior adviser on China at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Edgard Kagan, wrote in an analysis, but it will “encourage President Trump to reach an agreement that reopens the strait.”Going into the summit, China is trying to project an image of honest broker between Iran and America even though it has long appeared to lean to Iran’s side. Beijing is counting on Mr. Trump’s ambition to end the war well before campaigning for the November congressional midterm elections, which may cost Republican seats, for its own leverage.If the war is placing Mr. Trump in a somewhat ambivalent position, China also has to be careful not to get too far on the wrong side of the Americans and others anxious for the strait to reopen to hundreds of tankers a day, not just the few whom Iran has permitted to run a gauntlet past American naval ships.“The war in Iran has made China’s future posture in the Gulf more uncertain,” reads a Chatham House study. “Some analysts have rushed to conclude that the war has revealed China’s absence and proved that the U.S. is the only reliable security partner for the Gulf states. Others claim that the war has pushed Gulf states closer to China as U.S. predominance has declined.”The degree of pressure that China might exert on Iran, possibly in talks staged in Pakistan, will depend in large measure on whatever understandings Messrs. Xi and Trump can reach during their two days of talks Thursday and Friday. One guarantee Mr. Trump can make is not to raise tariffs above the current level of 25 percent, which may seem high but is far less than the stratospheric levels he threatened last year.“President Trump wants to show that his relationship with Chairman Xi can deliver tangible economic and security benefits to the United States,” says Mr. Kagan. “The Trump administration wants to show that it has brought fairness and reciprocity to the economic relationship, which the president has long argued favors China.” At the top of the list, says Mr. Kagan, Mr. Trump wants China’s commitment to purchase a significant amount of U.S. goods and services “that will ripple through the economy in key U.S. sectors, including agriculture, by the November midterm elections.”After all the talking in Beijing is done, however, it’s also possible the leaders of the world’s two richest, most powerful countries will fail to come to terms.“Outside observers should have low expectations for the upcoming summit,” cautions a team of experts at another Washington think tank, the Brookings Institution. “The summit’s diplomacy has only reinforced the deeper drivers diminishing the likelihood of substantive gains.”Meanwhile, reads the Brookings report, “Beijing seems focused on using this interregnum to enhance its position vis-à-vis the United States” while “many in the Trump administration and on Capitol Hill favor a return to sustained strategic competition.”

Trump-Xi Summit at Beijing To Focus on Opening Strait of Hormuz

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