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Trump’s summit with China’s Xi Jinping was a perfect metaphor for the entire Trump presidency: no strategic goals or coherent plans, and a clear win for America’s main global adversary. There was zero progress on the real issues in the fraught US-China relationship, which would be a challenge even for a competent president.
Instead, the pageantry suggested a declining power fawning in the face of a rising one. Trump greeted Xi on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base with a literal red carpet, a rare gesture even for close allies and never for adversaries. (The last time was in 1962, when President Kennedy greeted British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan.) Trump’s happiest narcissistic moment seemed to be when he showed the Chinese dictator his new gallery of past presidents, with an auto-pen standing in for Joe Biden, and got a laugh out of Xi.
Among the issues not addressed:
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The simmering trade war between the two superpowers
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Managing the race to dominate AI and the risks
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China’s aid to Iran
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China’s escalating threats to Taiwan
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China’s predatory trade and industrial policies
Instead, Xi was able to dominate both the optics of the event and the substance. China’s aid to Iran was never even discussed. On trade, a temporary patch extended the current partial pause in the trade war only until January.
On the question of AI, Xi brushed off concerns, saying that, “We have both the capability and responsibility to develop and manage AI for good and ensure that the development of AI is always under human control and serves the well-being of the people.” Trump did not press the point because he thinks the US can win what he regards as an AI arms race for supremacy.
On the crucial case of Taiwan, according to China’s official news agency, Xinhua, in a private meeting Xi warned Trump to “adhere to the correct position of opposing ‘Taiwan independence.’” Trump, meanwhile, has yet to approve $14 billion dollars in promised military aid to Taiwan, despite pressure from congressional Republicans and Democrats. At one point in the meetings, U.S. ambassador to China David Perdue told Fox News on Sunday, Trump asked Xi if he would like to buy some arms from the U.S.
In one respect, Trump behaved like a useful idiot. On the eve of an election, Trump has thoroughly split his base.
Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, went to the Senate floor to remind Trump that “his guest is a brutal, unelected, and oppressive dictator who seeks to dominate his neighbors and whose massive military arsenal is aimed directly at the United States of America.”
“I think president Xi is a reptile,” said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana. “I’ve met President Xi … This man thinks he’s on a mission from God except his god is himself.” |
