Trump says he could delay Beijing trip as delegations meet

WASHINGTON

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, left, shakes hands with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, right, during a bilateral meeting between the United States and China, in Geneva, Switzerland, on Saturday, May 10, 2025.

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 on March 15 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.

Trump's new comments came as U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng yesterday in Paris for a new round of trade talks that were meant to pave the way for Trump’s Beijing trip.

The U.S. and China have declared a truce that has prevented both sides from levying dueling tariffs, but the stakes remain high.

Trump’s visit to China will be the first for a U.S. president since he went in his first term in 2017. It will come five months after the two leaders met in the South Korean city of Busan and agreed to a one-year truce in a trade war that temporarily saw tit-for-tat tariffs soar to triple digits before the two sides climbed down.

Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it would be a “big year” for China-U.S. relations. While he did not confirm the state visit, Wang said that “the agenda of high-level exchange is already on the table.”

Bessent and He have led trade negotiations between the countries since last year, having met in Geneva, London, Stockholm, Madrid and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Still, trade remains a source of tensions.

Beijing said on March 16 it has "lodged representations" and urged Washington to "correct its erroneous ways" after the U.S. launched new trade probes last week.

Washington's trade investigations target 60 economies including China and will look into "failures to take action on forced labor" and whether these burden or restrict U.S. commerce.

Those investigations came a day after a separate set of U.S. probes centered on excess industrial capacity that target 16 trading partners including China, which Beijing's foreign ministry criticised as "political manipulation".