Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley criticized President Biden, saying he “begged” for his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“Well, I think you’ve seen Biden has begged for this meeting, right? He sent four Cabinet members to China to go and try and court the Chinese, and so now they’re going to grant him a meeting,” she said Friday on Fox News. “But the key is, what’s he going to talk about in the meeting?”
Mr. Biden is set to meet with Mr. Xi on Wednesday in San Francisco at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit to discuss trade, Taiwan and U.S.-Chinese relations. The last time they met was in Indonesia last November for the G20 summit.
“There’s a lot of questions we need to talk about, but the one thing I can promise you is going to come out is they’re going to have a conversation about the weather and talk about the environment and talk about how they’re going to work together on that. He’s not going to call them out on anything else,” the former South Carolina governor said. “That’s why President Xi is willing to meet with them, is they’re not scared of Joe Biden.”
She said the two presidents should discuss topics like fentanyl coming into the U.S., intellectual property theft and why China is “putting a military and spy base in Cuba just off our shores.”
She added, “What we need to be saying is we’re going to end all normal trade relations with you if you don’t stop murdering these Americans with fentanyl, we’re going to stop you stealing intellectual property and we’re going to stop sending any of that over to you.”
The goal of the meeting is to restore military-to-military communications that have faded since last year in hopes of reducing the tension between the U.S. and China.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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