On the presidential campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to get tough with China on currency and trade issues.
President Trump, however, appears to have changed tack after a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. He tweeted on April 16: “Why would I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the North Korean problem? We will see what happens!”
Trump has since been criticized by several mainstream news outlets for softening his stance on the Chinese regime.
But a close parsing of Trump’s comments to the media on the regime and Xi may suggest that Trump recently gained some insight into the delicate political situation in China. This insight, and the Xi leadership’s prompt actions against North Korea, could have convinced Trump to hold off on rebuking Xi.
Xi and Trump announced at the conclusion of a two-day U.S.–China summit in Florida that they had established a good understanding of one another. “We were together hours and hours and hours by ourselves,” Trump told “Fox & Friends.“ ”We had a 15-minute scheduled meeting, and it lasted for three hours. And the same thing happened the next day.”
The six hours of private talk time—or somewhat less, considering breaks and translation time—would be sufficient for Xi to give Trump a decent breakdown of the challenges he faces from a rival political faction headed by former Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin.
