North Korea is on the table as Xi arrives at Mar-a-Lago
DONALD TRUMP will today tell China’s Xi Jinping that North Korea has become a “strategic liability” and demand trade concessions at a high-stakes Florida summit between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies.
Mr Xi and Mr Trump shook hands as they met at the US president’s Mar-aLago holiday retreat last night, and held their first face-to-face talks.
The Chinese president and his wife, Peng Liyuan, drove down a palm-lined driveway past a military honour guard and were greeted by a smiling Mr Trump and the first lady, Melania.
During dinner, Mr Trump said he had “developed a friendship” with Mr Xi and that he thinks he will have a “very, very great relationship” with the Chinese leader.
The US president joked that “so far I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing” in talks.
The meeting comes after North Korea carried out a ballistic missile test on Wednesday, and as Mr Trump’s supporters demanded he fulfil his campaign promise to bring manufacturing jobs back from China.
Speaking hours before he met Mr Xi, Mr Trump said: “We have a big problem on North Korea, so we’re going to see what happens.”
Asked if he hoped to leverage China into action over North Korea’s nuclear programme, Mr Trump said: “I’ll tell you we’ll be in there pitching, and I think we’re going to do very well.”
A US official said the potential for ramping up “secondary sanctions” against Chinese banks and companies that do business with Pyongyang would be “an early topic of conversation” and a “very live” subject. “The feeling on our side is that this problem has really now become urgent. It reaches across the globe,” the official said. “Patience has basically come to an end. We feel this problem has now crossed a certain line and we can no longer hope for some kind of reversion to negotiations. We need to do something proactive to get some results.”
A White House National Security Council official added: “It’s in Beijing’s interest. We think that North Korea long ago ceased to be a strategic asset for China. It is … a strategic liability.”
Mr Trump would be “sending a clear signal” to Mr Xi on North Korea.
He told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to Florida that he was going to address what he sees as an imbalanced trade relationship between the two powers – an issue he talked about in his presidential campaign.
“We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible trade deals with China for many, many years. That’s one of the things we are going to be talking about,” the president said.
The US trade deficit with China last year was $347 billion (£278 billion), more than two thirds of the entire US deficit.