Trump heads to China weak and embarrassed |
Trump heads to China weak and embarrassed
May 11, 2026 — 11:59am
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When Donald Trump arrives in Beijing this week for his summit with Xi Jinping, he’ll bring with him a long list of prospective deals he wants from China. Xi, playing a longer game, will probably be happy to oblige.
Trump will arrive at the summit in a much weaker position – and Xi in a stronger one – than he might have envisaged when the meeting, deferred for a month because of the war with Iran, was agreed to last October after the countries arranged a truce in their trade conflict.
His “Liberation Day” tariffs on the rest of the world have been struck out by the US Supreme Court and their temporary replacement, the 10 per cent baseline tariffs on the rest of the world, were deemed illegal by the US Court of International Trade last week. The administration could have to return up to $US200 billion ($276 billion) of tariff revenues.
The war in the Middle East hasn’t gone as planned, with the Strait of Hormuz still closed, threatening a global economic slowdown and forcing steep increases in US domestic petrol and diesel prices.
The five ‘Bs’ and three ‘Ts’ at the heart of the Trump-Xi meeting
Trump, who thought US economic and military might made him omnipotent, has been weakened by the failures of his trade and military adventurism.
Those misadventures have created distance and tensions between the US and other Western economies and leaders that that Joe Biden cultivated as allies in his “small yard, high fence” approach to maintaining America’s technological supremacy while constraining China’s efforts to challenge it. Relationships with both the US and China have been reconsidered.
When Trump meets Xi, he will be more of a supplicant than a potentate.
He wants China’s help to persuade Iran, China’s closest Middle Eastern ally, to re-open the strait.
He wants China to do a deal that ensure US access to the rare earths and other critical minerals that are vital to US industrial and technology companies. It was the threat to cut off access to those minerals that caused Trump to back down from his threat of 145 per cent tariffs on China’s exports to the US last........