WASHINGTON – President-elect Biden will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the last time as president-elect on the sidelines of this week’s APEC summit in Peru. Donald Trump threatens to impose new tariffs on Chinese goods And force the Asian nation to pay “compensation” for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden, 81, and Xi, 71, will meet in Lima on Saturday – and administration officials say the US president plans to score a victory on reducing fentanyl overdose deaths this year. Xi had privately agreed to restrict shipments of deadly opioids at another Biden meeting last year,
More than 223,000 US residents died from fentanyl and related compounds during Biden’s first three years in office, according to Estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Republican politicians criticized Biden early in his term for not doing more to stem the flow.
A US official said, “We hope the President will use this opportunity to take stock of efforts to responsibly manage competition over the past four years and how the two countries have advanced areas of shared interest.”
“These steps are helping us tackle the global fentanyl crisis at home and contributing to the decline in overdose deaths and disruption to the illicit fentanyl supply that we have seen over the past year.”
Biden and Xi are also expected to discuss artificial intelligence and global warming – as Trump regularly ridicules China’s lack of commitment to reducing its own fossil fuel use.
“On AI, both sides have recognized new risks… and have begun difficult but productive conversations about AI safety and risk,” the US official said.
“On climate, our countries’ envoys have also had deep and meaningful discussions over the past four years, leading to three far-reaching joint statements that set the stage for climate commitments on greenhouse gas reductions, peak emissions and renewable energy “
Trump has been deeply skeptical of international agreements that commit the US to reducing its use of fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. During his first term, the 45th President Withdrawal from Paris climate agreementArguing that China is not being held to the same standards.
Biden ultimately kept Trump’s first-term tariffs on China in place and also added some new tariffs in May as he sought re-election, ultimately before Droped out of the campaign after two months.
In 2018 Trump imposed 25% tariffs on steel and 10% tariffs on aluminum from most countries, including China. He later imposed tariffs of between 7.5% and 25% on Chinese goods worth $362 billion of annual imports, or more than half Of the total.
In May, Biden announced tariffs on about $18 billion of annual Chinese imports — including metals like steel and aluminum and green-energy technologies like solar panels and electric vehicles, as well as other goods including some semiconductors, construction cranes and medical products. Are included.
Under those Biden tariffs over the next two years, electric vehicles would face 100% tariffs, a 50% import levy on solar panel parts and a 25% penalty on other goods.
When Trump takes office again in January, he is expected to take a more direct approach to pressure China, although he has also talked about the importance of maintaining good personal relations with Xi.
Biden and Xi previously met in Bali, Indonesia in 2022 and outside San Francisco last year.
Biden did not publicly pressure Xi in any of their previous meetings to curb fentanyl exports, but walked away from the second meeting with an agreement to do so – something Trump also claimed during his tenure. Xi agreed to the action, although one that did not succeed after Republicans lost to Biden in the 2020 election and U.S. deaths increased as the compound was increasingly cut into non-opioid drugs. , resulting in the deaths of unwitting Americans.
Biden also did not publicly pressure Xi to be transparent on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, which parts of the US government believe began with a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China. It ultimately resulted in the deaths of more than 1 million Americans and caused massive social, economic harm, and educational upheaval.
Trump has forced China to pay $50 trillion in “compensation” for the virus and last year called for a “global summit” on the topic.
The president-elect and his congressional allies have regularly accused Biden of being insufficiently tough on China because of state-owned companies’ actions during and immediately after Joe Biden’s vice-presidency, including first son Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden was paid millions.
Joe Biden met with the leaders of both major Chinese business enterprises linked to his relatives — and in an infamous 2017 email, one of Hunter’s associates outlined a 10% cut for the “big guy” in the proposed joint venture .
Trump claimed last year that Biden was “bribed and now being blackmailed” by Beijing and the House speaker. Mike Johnson (R-La.) told The Post That Biden was “soft” on China and “it probably has something to do with trade relations and that may involve Hunter and James Biden and some of the deals they made there.”
Biden’s possible meeting with Xi was announced as the outgoing president welcomed Trump to the White House for talks on the presidential transition, with people exchanging kind words during a brief press availability in the Oval Office. Did.
(TagstoTranslate)Politics(T)US News(T)China(T)Diplomacy(T)Foreign Policy(T)Joe Biden(T)Peru(T)Xi Jinping
