Showdown at Mar-a-Lago: Trump's Blind Date with Xi
04-06-2017
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Today's meeting between President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China has been called "a blind date with global ramifications." The two men may have never met, but they have a lot to talk about.
And there's no mystery over the agenda at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
North Korea will be near the top. On Wednesday, the nation known as the hermit kingdom launched another medium-range ballistic missile, putting an exclamation point to its ongoing barrage of threats.
President Trump calls North Korea "a big problem."
"We have somebody that is not doing the right thing. And that's going to be my responsibility," he added.
International affairs expert Jean-Pierre Cabestan of Hong Kong Baptist University says, "Clearly, Trump would like to see China putting more pressure on North Korea. As you know China would like to see the U.S. opening direct negotiations with North Korea."
The other big issue on the agenda is trade. Trump has already tweeted that the U.S. "can no longer have massive trade deficits" with China.
"And then you've got a long list of issues of common concern," Cabestan says, "all the way from the South China Sea to Taiwan."
And in another major foreign policy challenge, the chemical weapons attack that killed at least 72 people in Syria seems to have changed President Trump's perception of the civil war there and the Russian-backed Assad regime.
Before becoming president, Trump had said "Syria is not our problem." But on Wednesday he said, "That attack on children yesterday, had a big impact on me. Big impact. My attitude towards Syria and Assad has changed very much."
At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, Russia continued to deny that the Syrian government was behind it.
The Syrian foreign minister said today his country never used and will not use chemical weapons in Syria.
But U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley said the facts were undeniable. "There are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action," she said.
President Trump was non-committal on whether the U.S. would take action over the attack, telling reporters if he were to do something, "I'm certainly not going to tell you."
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