U.S. President Donald Trump is suggesting he may delay his much-anticipated visit to China at the end of the month as he seeks to ramp up the pressure on Beijing to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz and calm oil prices that have soared during the Iran war.

In an interview Sunday with the Financial Times, Trump said China’s reliance on oil from the Middle East means it ought to help with a new coalition he is trying to put together to get oil tanker traffic moving through the strait after Iran’s threats have throttled global flows of oil.

Trump said “we’d like to know” before the trip whether Beijing will help. “We may delay,” Trump said in the interview.

The uncertainty underscores just how much the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran have reshaped global politics in the past two weeks. Calling off the face-to-face visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping could have its own major economic consequences: Relations between Washington and Beijing have been fraught as both sides have threatened the other with steep tariffs over the past year.

  • manxu@piefed.social
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    11 hours ago

    The uncertainty underscores just how much the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran have reshaped global politics in the past two weeks.

    I don’t know. It somehow feels like the strikes have mostly shown how the U.S./Israeli coalition massively overplayed its hand. Did they really reshape global politics?