WASHINGTON – Donald Trump is unlikely to get the “big, fat, hug” he’s envisioning from China’s notoriously straitlaced leader, President Xi Jinping, when he arrives in Beijing for a pomp-filled visit and talks on Iran.
A firm handshake and a ceremonial red carpet is more like it. And lots of arm-twisting over U.S. military support for Taiwan.
“We are working together smartly, and very well! Doesn’t that beat fighting???” Trump said of the authoritarian leader in April. “He’s a great gentleman. I find him to be an amazing man,” Trump told reporters May 11.
Trump prioritizes his relationships with world leaders and views his rapport with them “as one of his special skills and his unique strengths,” said Alexander Gray, who was Asia director, and later, chief of staff, on the National Security Council in Trump’s first administration.
But, Gray said, “The president is also very mindful of the fact that, in many ways, what Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party want is 180 degrees different from what the United States wants.”
