Wary mood to mark Xi-Trump summit with irritants aplenty on both sides: analysts

Washington and Beijing have piled on irritants in advance of this week’s summit

between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, suggesting that neither side wants to be seen as a deal killer – even as they try to build potential leverage to bargain away, analysts and former US government officials said.

Scott Kennedy, senior adviser with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that both sides had been “picking up some chits which they might be able to negotiate on during the meeting”.

“Each side has enormous leverage over the other, managing their interdependence in a way that doesn’t lead to escalatory spirals,” he added.

Trump is scheduled to land in Beijing on Wednesday for the long-anticipated meeting that was delayed two months by the US-Israel war on Iran

– also now the dominant topic on a schedule that was supposed to focus primarily on trade stabilisation.

“Let’s face it, it will push a lot of other things off the agenda,” said Lyle Goldstein, Brown University’s Asia programme director. “Trump is focused on it because he wants it off his desk.”

Both sides want the strategic Strait of Hormuz opened, a chokepoint for China’s energy and trade links and generator of US inflation.