The North Korean nuclear menace threatens to overshadow a large and diverse agenda as President Trump embarks Friday on the first major Asia visit of his presidency — an 11-day tour to include stops in five countries, a high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and a possible meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Warm receptions at the start of the trip in Japan and South Korea may provide respite from the political strife and sagging polls that Mr. Trump faces in Washington, but the president will be navigating the most delicate diplomatic challenge of his tenure when he arrives Wednesday in Beijing.
“China is the most important stop on the trip,” said Joseph DeTrani, a longtime former U.S. intelligence official and regional specialist, who noted that Mr. Xi will be riding high after cementing his power and winning a second five-year term at last month’s 19th Communist Party Congress.
Mr. Xi’s strong political position may make him less likely to be conciliatory on issues such as North Korea, trade deficits and the South China Sea, but Mr. Trump’s aides say he will forcefully press the U.S. case and signal the Trump administration’s determination to preserve the U.S. role in the region.
A senior administration official said on background this week that Mr. Trump hopes “to secure China’s commitments to exert more pressure on North Korea and to rebalance U.S.-China economic relations.”
Mr. DeTrani told The Washington Times on Wednesday that a broad joint statement on North Korea is a likely “deliverable” from the visit, although the exact language may be a sticking point for both sides. U.S. officials complain that past Chinese expressions of resolve against Pyongyang haven’t always played out in practice.
The Chinese might provide behind-the-scenes assurances that they are fully on board with trying to pressure Pyongyang toward re-entering formal nuclear talks with Washington. But in exchange, Beijing is likely to seek some form of public assurance that Mr. Trump is serious about a nonmilitary solution to the North Korea crisis.
Mr. DeTrani, who served as special U.S. envoy to North Korea nuclear talks before they collapsed nearly a decade ago, said that if he were “advising President Trump and Xi Jinping, I’d urge them to put out a joint statement that says both Washington and Beijing are working toward the goal of complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a way that’s also mindful of North Korea’s security concerns.”
But such language, particularly the part about being “mindful” to North Korean concerns, may be too big a concession to expect from Mr. Trump. Another former U.S. intelligence official, who has been privately advising the administration on Asia policy, suggested that the president’s inner circle hasn’t decided what it hopes to get out of Mr. Xi vis-a-vis the North Korea issue.
Other sources said this week that diplomatic calculus around the issue was in flux amid rumors that the Trump administration plans to list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism before Mr. Trump leaves on his trip.
The trip will prove a test of Mr. Trump’s diplomatic and negotiating skills, coming as his administration faces legal and policy challenges back home and a make-or-break rollout of his tax overhaul plan. Many key Asian diplomatic posts in the administration have yet to be filled, and there is skepticism across the region that his military, diplomatic and economic priorities amount to a coherent strategy that can contain North Korea, reset trade patterns and manage the rise of China.
“There are few advisers around President Trump with the necessary expertise, experience and inclination to implement an ’America First’ foreign policy in Asia,” Aaron L. Connelly, a regional specialist at the Lowy Institute, an Australian foreign policy think tank, wrote in an analysis this week.
“U.S. policy in East Asia is on autopilot,” Mr. Connelly said. “The greatest risks are not a deliberate crash, but that of a crisis, in which the autopilot will disengage and President Trump will be required to fly the plane; or that the United States will drift far off course before a qualified pilot can retake control.”
Attacking China on trade
Mr. Trump is likely to take a hard line on trade issues with China, which holds bonds worth about $1.24 trillion — or some 30 percent — of the more than $4 trillion in U.S. Treasury notes held by foreign nations. China also has by far the largest bilateral trade surplus with the U.S., a frequent source of complaint by Mr. Trump on the campaign trail last year.
Mr. Trump has tackled the issue by focusing on things China might do to help stimulate the U.S. economy.
U.S. officials say the president is poised to build off an August phone call in which he warned Mr. Xi that Washington could begin formally investigating suspected Chinese theft of American technology and intellectual property.
Mr. Trump, the officials say, wants a specific examination of China’s practice of forcing American companies to share their intellectual property in order to gain access to the Chinese economy — the world’s second-largest.
In Beijing, the president is likely to “tell Xi Jinping, ’I’m coming after you on trade,’” said Christopher Johnson, a China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“I think the Chinese, because of that concern, are very eager to use the summit meeting to try to press the reset button on the relationship, post-party congress, really between the two presidents,” Mr. Johnson said at a briefing the think tank held in Washington on Wednesday.
Away from the Beijing visit, the White House has said the Nov. 3-14 trip, which will also include stops in Vietnam and the Philippines, will center on boosting overall U.S. economic and security alliances across East Asia, where many traditional U.S. allies worry about America’s commitment given an increasingly rich and assertive China and Mr. Trump’s decision to reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership regional trade deal in his first days in office.
Whirlwind trip
The Asia trip will be the longest foreign excursion to date of the Mr. Trump’s presidency, and he will deliver several major speeches designed to reaffirm U.S. leadership in the region.
White House officials have said the president plans to muster support from U.S. allies on China’s periphery across the region, especially from South Korea and Japan.
The trip begins Friday with a stop in Hawaii, where the president will receive a briefing from the U.S. Pacific Command, visit Pearl Harbor and tour the USS Arizona Memorial. He is scheduled to arrive Sunday in Japan, where he will meet with American and Japanese service members and participate in bilateral discussions with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
A similar bilateral meeting is scheduled with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Seoul before Mr. Trump heads to Beijing. After Beijing, he will make a stop in Danang, Vietnam, to participate in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
It is on the sidelines of APEC that a Trump-Putin meeting is likely. While the White House has yet to say whether meeting will occur, a Russian diplomat told The Times that Moscow seeks it and hopes it will present a chance for the two leaders to discuss the future of rival U.S. and Russian military operations in Syria.
The president will wrap up his Asia trip in the Philippines, where he will participate in a dinner to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and hold bilateral meetings with President Rodrigo Duterte.
Mr. Duterte’s own unpredictable and often bombastic style in public has won him the nickname the ’Filipino Donald Trump’ — a factor that is expected to result some headline-worthy theatrics between the two men.
Mr. Trump originally planned to attend a second summit of East Asian nations in the Philippines city of Angeles the day after the ASEAN gathering but decided to return to Washington a day early.
• S.A. Miller and Dave Boyer contributed to this report.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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