President Donald Trump is suggesting he may delay his much-anticipated visit to China at the end of the month as he seeks to ramp up the pressure on Beijing to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz and calm oil prices that have soared during the Iran war.
In an interview Sunday with the Financial Times, Trump said Chinas reliance on oil from the Middle East means it ought to help with a new coalition he is trying to put together to get oil tanker traffic moving through the strait after Irans threats have throttled global flows of oil. Trump said wed like to know before the trip whether Beijing will help. We may delay, Trump said in the interview.
In Beijing, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said only that China and the U.S. have maintained communication on Trumps visit. Head-of-state diplomacy plays an irreplaceable strategic guiding role in China-U.S. relations, Lin Jian said at a daily briefing.
The Washington Post reported last week that two ships owned by an Iranian company that the United States has accused of supplying materials to Tehrans ballistic missile program departed from a Chinese chemical storage port this week, loaded with cargo and heading toward Iran.
Trumps new comments came as U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng on Monday in Paris for a new round of trade talks that were meant to pave the way for Trumps Beijing trip. The U.S. and China have declared a truce that has prevented both sides from levying dueling tariffs, but the stakes remain high.
In the early days of the Iran conflict, Trump had said U.S. navy vessels would escort oil tankers through the strait, and downplayed the threat posed by Iran. But as oil prices soared, he and his administration have been forced to consider new options including the idea, broached this weekend, for other countries to join the push with their own warships. So far, none has yet formally heeded the call.
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from a weekend in Florida that the U.S. had spoken to about seven nations about offering military support. He wouldnt say which ones, though, and demurred when he was asked directly about China though he subsequently suggested that hed made such an offer to Beijing.
Chinas an interesting case study, he said, noting its reliance on Gulf oil. So I said, Would you like to come in and well find out. Maybe they will, maybe they wont.
(AP & YWN Israel DeskJerusalem)
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One Response
I’m sure the Chinese will be devastated