Trump touts U.S.-China friendship
President shelves previous rhetoric
BEIJING — President Donald Trump set aside his blistering rhetoric in favor of friendly overtures to China on Thursday, trying to flatter his hosts into establishing a more balanced trade relationship and doing more to blunt North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
Winding down his two days in Beijing, Mr. Trump saluted the “growing friendship” between the United States and China while he andfirst lady Melania Trump were the guests of honor at a state dinner at the Great Hall ofthe People in Beijing.
Mr. Trump offered a toast to Chinese President Xi Jinping, touting bonds “that will only grow stronger and stronger.”
Mr. Trump also suggested that if the U.S. and China jointly took on the world’s problems, “I believe we can solve almost all of them, and probably all of them.”
The dinner capped off two days of pageantry and negotiations between Mr. Xi and Mr. Trump. At the dinner, neither man made mention of thorny issues like trade and attempts to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Indeed, outside of the dinner — in the name of furthering the U.S. relationship with Beijing — Mr. Trump largely shelved his campaign complaints about China, at least in public. He focused on exhorting Beijing to help with North Korea, an effort expected again to take center stage at an international summit in Vietnam on Friday.
The Chinese rolled out a lavish welcome for the American president. Mr. Trump returned the kindness, heaping praise on China’s Mr. Xi and predicting the two powers would work around entrenched differences. On Twitter later, Mr. Trump called his meetings with Mr. Xi “very productive on both trade and the subject of North Korea.”
On trade, Mr. Trump criticized the “very one-sided and unfair” relationship between the U.S. and China. But unlike his approach during the campaign, when he castigated China for what he contended were inappropriate trade practices, Mr. Trump said Thursday that he didn’t blame the Chinese for having taken advantage of the U.S. in the past.
Mr. Trump said China “must immediately address the unfair trade practices” that drive a “shockingly” large trade deficit, along with barriers to market access, forced technology transfers and intellectual property theft.
“But I don’t blame China,” he said. “After all, who can blame a country for being able to take advantage of another country for the benefit of its citizens?”
Reacting from afar, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said Mr. Trump’s comments “make the United States look weak and as if we are bowing to China’s whim. ... Instead of giving China credit for stealing American jobs, the president should be holding China accountable.” Mr. Menendez, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is on trial for bribery.