Pyongyang is increasingly a ‘focus’ of US-China meeting

WASHINGTON, April 5, (AP): The White House is talking in more urgent terms about North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, as President Donald Trump’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping approach. One senior administration official warned that the “clock has now run out” on Pyongyang.

Trump and Xi will huddle Thursday and Friday at Trump’s Mara-Lago estate in Florida, a venue chosen to give the summit a more informal feel. White House officials said Tuesday that trade and security would be high on the new American president’s agenda, including pushing China to exert more economic pressure on North Korea.

Speaking at a White House business forum Tuesday, Trump called North Korea a “humanity problem.” A White House official later said “all options are on the table” for the US, though the official would not say what steps Trump was willing to take to curb Pyongyang’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

North Korea fired a ballistic missile into the waters off its east coast on Wednesday, US and South Korean officials said, in a reminder of the simmering tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Like many nations, China is still grappling with Trump’s mercurial nature after the relative transparency and predictability of the bilateral relationship under Barack Obama. Both during his campaign and after his victory, Trump complained repeatedly about China’s allegedly unfair trade practices, its perceived lack of assistance in reining in North Korea and its drive to cement control over the South China Sea.

Some analysts believe Xi might be willing to hand Trump a symbolic victory on trade to put a positive spin on the meeting.

“Xi probably can’t accommodate Trump on sovereignty and security issues, but he has a lot of leeway on economics,” said Robert Sutter, a China expert at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Yet even if Xi is able to offer Trump deliverables, he will still have to deal with “a restless US president valuing unpredictability and seeking advantage for his agenda going forward,” Sutter said.

Trump was seen as moving trade even more to the forefront when he signed a pair of executive orders Friday focused on reducing the trade deficit. Coupled together, the orders appeared to be a symbolic shot at China, which accounted for the vast bulk — $347 billion — of last year’s $502 billion trade deficit.

While aides insisted the timing was coincidental, the administration touted the moves as evidence of an aggressive but analytical approach to closing a yawning trade gap that is largely due to the influx of goods from China.

Still, Trump told the Financial Times newspaper that during his meeting with Xi, he doesn’t “want to talk about tariffs yet, perhaps the next time we meet.”