WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump is expected to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday evening as he seeks to downplay differences with President Xi Jinping over the US-Israel war on Iran.
Trump is bringing a host of top business and technology industry executives on his trip to China this week.
Among those joining the president on his official trip to Beijing are Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Larry Fink of BlackRock, as well as other executives from Meta, Visa, JP Morgan, Boeing, Cargill and more.
In total, 17 US executives will join Trump on the trip, a White House official said.
The trip is seen as important for the US, as Trump will meet with Xi at a time of growing economic and technological tensions between the two countries.
Trump has been unsuccessfully pressing Xi to use China’s considerable leverage to prod Iran to agree to US terms to end the two-month-old war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
But just before he left the White House on Tuesday for his flight to Beijing, Trump said he did not think he would need to enlist the Chinese president to resolve the conflict.
“I don’t think we need any help with Iran,” Trump said to reporters. “We’ll win it one way or the other – peacefully or otherwise.”
“We’re going to have a long talk about it. I think he’s been relatively good, to be honest with you,” Trump said of his plans to discuss the conflict with Xi. Minutes later, he added, “We have a lot of things to discuss. I wouldn’t say Iran is one of them, to be honest with you, because we have Iran very much under control.”
Iran, meanwhile, has appeared to firm up its control over the Strait of Hormuz, cutting deals with Iraq and Pakistan to ship oil and liquefied natural gas from the region, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.
Other countries are exploring similar deals, sources said, in a move that could normalize Tehran’s control of the waterway on a more permanent basis.
The Trump administration said on Tuesday that senior US and Chinese officials had agreed last month that no country should be able to charge tolls on traffic through the region, in an effort to project consensus on the issue ahead of the summit.
China maintains ties with Iran and remains a major buyer of its oil. Trump is widely expected to encourage China to convince Tehran to make a deal with Washington to end the conflict.
Source: Saudi Gazette