Donald Trump: Only time will tell on US-China trade

Beijing’s most powerful leader in decades also invited the neophyte USA president on a coveted state visit to China later in the year.

Despite what some see as softened criticism of the U.S. attack on a Syrian airbase, Trump described his personal relationship with Xi as “outstanding”.

The pro-independence Liberty Times said Trump was “shaking hands with Xi Jinping with his left hand and launching missiles with his right” to pressure China to rein in North Korea.

For Xi, the meeting appeared to exceed low expectations.

The missile strike on Syria overshadowed meetings that United States and Chinese officials described as big-picture conversations on trade as well as North Korea, which stopped short of producing specific agreements.

Trump told Xi that he welcomes any ideas China has on the issue and the US would be happy to work with Beijing.

And in an indication that joint efforts to tackle global warming will lose steam, the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, admitted the environment “was not a major part of the discussion, nor do I recall the Chinese specifically raising it”.

But there was little indication as to how the two new friends got along over contentious issues such as China’s use of the South China Sea and the North Korean crisis. North Korea is developing missiles capable of hitting the United States.

– Trump stressed the importance of China following worldwide norms in the South and East China seas.

But even as Trump basked in generally favorable reviews of the first direct US military strike aimed at Assad, the president and his lieutenants seemed far less eager to engage knotty longer-term policy questions about the grinding multi-sided Syrian war, now in its seventh year.

At the United Nations on Friday, Russia’s deputy ambassador, Vladimir Safronkov, strongly criticized what he called the U.S. He did not elaborate.

China is ready to enhance law-enforcement cooperation with the US side, said Xi, calling on the two sides to jointly combat transnational crimes such as drug trafficking, child trafficking, money laundering, cyber crime and organized crime. -China relationship and burnishing his foreign policy credentials than achieving a breakthrough.

The Chinese commentaries, however, made no mention of the USA missile strike on a Syrian government air base, which overshadowed the summit.

Thursday night’s strikes – some 60 cruise missiles fired from two ships in the Mediterranean – were the culmination of a rapid, three-day transformation for Trump, who has long opposed deeper US involvement in Syria’s civil war. He noted the historic responsibility of both countries – the world’s largest economies and emerging military rivals – to work toward peace and stability.

Trump hosted the Chinese President for a two-day visit at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the BBC reported on Saturday.

Beijing has avoided publicly taking sides on the issue.

The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement Sunday lauded the overall success of the U.S.

Trump says they made “tremendous progress” over dinner Thursday, and he’s predicting that even more progress will be made before Xi departs later Friday. “We’ll be making a lot of additional progress”, Trump said after talks with Xi at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Currency: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said a decision on the currency manipulator label will be addressed in a report coming out “in the very near future”.

Xi was said to have shared that North Korea has “reached a very serious stage” in the advancement of its nuclear capabilities, Tillerson said. “The president underscored the need for China to take concrete steps to level the playing field for American workers, stressing repeatedly the need for reciprocal market access”.

Chinese state media on Saturday cheered the meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping as one that showed the world that confrontation between the two powers was not inevitable.

“We have made tremendous progress in our relationship with China” Trump said without going into specifics.

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said that the two sides agreed to a “100-day plan” aimed at increasing US exports to China and reducing the trade deficit with the country. It’s a two-way street, with Alaska’s imports from China only lagging behind trade with neighboring Canada. Trump has repeatedly hammered China for exporting more to the USA than it buys.