Riding on the back of his most recent “success” in the Iran War, Trump is scheduled to visit President Xi on May 13 to 15.
It is interesting to previewwho has what “cards”ahead of the meetings and speculate what the “asks” are from each side.
This way, we can have a clear-eyed view who has the leverage, who needs the other more, and what will come out of the summit.
Since Trump’s second term, he has started or continued a range of confrontations aimed at China. These include trade, technology, energy and critical minerals, military manuveurs, financial sanctions, and Taiwan.
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His military adventures in Venezuela and Iran are both explicitly targeted at choke-holding China’s energy supply.
Of course, Trump also wants to “show off” how “mighty” the US military is.
In Trump’s calculation, a direct war with a superpower Russia in Ukraine is dangerous, but a crushing defeat of a second-tier regional power Iran and a third-world weakling Venezuela would serve as solid “muscle flexing” to Beijing.
Even his “spat” with Europe over Greenland is largely driven by a desire to secure critical minerals and rare earth to become less dependent on Chinese supply chains.
One could argue that much of Trump’s foreign policies in the last 16 months have been aimed at maximizing leverage over China – the US grand national strategy to contain China since the “pivot to Asia” in 2011.
Source: SGT Report
