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US President Donald Trump talks with reporters after signing the Women‘s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative at the White House on Feb. 7. (AP)

US President Donald Trump has announced that he will not meet Chinese President Xi Jinping this month. He had previously announced that, with the North Korea-US Summit scheduled for Feb. 27 and 28, he would also meet President Xi at the end of the month, raising hopes for a “grand deal” of trade negotiations between the US and China, and an announcement a quadrilateral declaration ending the Korean War. However, these expectations were dashed with the latest announcement.

On Feb. 7, Trump answered in the negative to a question from a reporter at the White House about whether he would meet President Xi before the negotiation deadline with China, according to Reuters. In answer to a question about whether he would be meeting with Xi next month, he said, “Not yet. Maybe.”

According to US media reports, a high-ranking member of the US government has also described the chances of a US-China summit this month as “very low.”

Trump’s stance has changed in just a matter of days. On Jan. 31, following a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He at the White House, he said that he would come to a mutual agreement on everything when he met with Xi, and added that it would be possible to hold the US-China and North Korea-US summits in succession. In addition, ahead of his State of the Union address on Tuesday night he told broadcast anchors that he would be meeting Xi at the end of this month.

Furthermore, in line with a report in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post that a US-China summit was under consideration for Vietnam on Feb. 27 and 28, there were expectations that Trump, during his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, would also meet Xi. The anticipation, then, was that the summit would become a great affair, where the North Korean, US and Chinese heads of state would meet and make great strides in a solution to the North Korean nuclear issue, as well as putting an end to the trade war between the US and China. There were even some who predicted that South Korean President Moon Jae-in would also participate, potentially leading to a quadrilateral declaration ending the Korean War by the two Koreas, the US and China.

But following Trump’s announcement that he would not meet Xi this month, the hope for a four-way declaring ending the Korean War has faded, and the possibility of a satisfying solution to the US-China trade war, whose temporary “truce” ends on Mar. 1, has also become unlikely. In reaction to the news that there would likely be no US-China summit before the end of the Mar. 1 truce, the representative indexes of the New York Stock Exchange declined by 0.8-0.9%.

The US and China agreed last year at the US-China summit on Dec. 1 that the US would delay the imposition of additional tariffs (from 10% to 25%) on US$200 billion of Chinese goods, and negotiate for the next 90 days until Mar. 1. The officially announced position of the US is that if the two countries do not reach an agreement by the deadline, the increased tariffs will kick in by 12:01 a.m. on Mar. 2.

Trump’s changed position is seen as the result of substantial differences in the trade negotiation process. China has expressed a willingness to resolve the trade imbalance by purchasing US goods in large quantities, but there remain considerable differences of opinion regarding demands from the US that China increase its protections of intellectual property rights, and ban the forced transfer of technologies as well as government subsidies. In an interview with Fox Business, Larry Kudlow, director of the United States National Economic Council, said that there is still a long way to go until an agreement can be reached.

Following talks in Washington, DC, at the end of last month, a US delegation will travel to China to continue the negotiations early next week.

The New York Times recently reported that according to a high-ranking US government official, if the US and China do not reach an agreement on the trade negotiations by the end of this month, it is possible that Trump will extend the deadline. This official also suggested that Trump and Xi might attempt to reach a compromise through a phone call or video conference call.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

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