Donald Trump is jetting off for a trip through Asia on Friday just hours after reigniting a tariff fight with Canada and days after placing new sanctions against Russia. The weeklong excursion to Malaysia, Japan and South Korea will conclude next week with an already-testy Trump sitting down with Chinese President Xi Jinping amid a raging trade war with China. And the president has talked a big game and set high expectations for the tour through Asia, claiming he will leave his meeting with Xi in South Korea with a 'really fair and really great trade deal.'
The trip comes after a week of breakdowns in foreign policy for the Trump administration. Peace in the Middle East still remains tenuous after the Israeli Knesset symbolically voted to support West Bank annexation after the president secured an agreement with Hamas earlier this month; his second meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin fell apart and led to imposition of oil sanctions; and tensions with China are at a months-long high. Trump's former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is calling the trip to Asia one of the president's 'riskiest' ever.
'The Chinese Communist Party has declared open economic warfare against America, so this is what they call a throw of the 'iron dice.' This is as high stakes as it gets,' he claimed. For a successful trip Trump will likely want to get Xi to back off some of escalatory actions including restrictions on products with trace amounts of Chinese rare earth minerals in them and halting of its purchase of American soybeans. Some fear that in an effort to reverse these actions, Trump might make sweeping concessions like removing export controls on semiconductor chips and manufacturing equipment.
'The worst case scenario for the United States is Trump concedes a whole lot,' Liza Tobin, who served as National Security Council director for China during the first Trump term and the start of the Biden administration, told Politico . Trump is leaving Washington, D.C. Friday night for his weeklong trip that will start in Malaysia where he will meet the prime ministers of Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand. He will also hold a working dinner with ASEAN Leaders. Early next week, the president will fly to Tokyo and meet with Japan's new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
Then he will head to South Korea where Trump will deliver remarks at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) before concluding his trip with the consequential bilateral meeting with Xi. During a White House event on Thursday Trump repeated his claim that tariffs are what stops the U.S. from being a 'third world nation.' Early in his second term, Trump imposed broad tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China before also imposing taxes on nearly every other country on earth.
In February, the president issued a 25 percent tariff on all imports from America's northern and southern neighbors and then an additional 10 percent on Chinese imports, which he doubled to 20 percent by March. The tariffs, Trump said, were punishment for Mexico, Canada and China emboldening fentanyl to flow into the U.S. and for allowing proliferation of the migration and drug trafficking crisis over American borders. Trump has negotiated with all three nations to alter tariffs after retaliatory taxes were placed on U.S. imports to those nations.
But on Thursday, Trump reignited the fight with Canada after Ontario Premier Doug Ford released a $53.5 million ad campaign using late President Ronald Reagan's words to push back against U.S. tariffs. A furious Trump slammed the ad as 'fake' and immediately announced on Truth Social that he was 'terminating' trade negotiations with Canada. The 60-second ad pulls from a 1987 radio address made by Reagan who was explaining at the time why he was placing tariffs on Japanese electronics.
'Let's take Ronald Reagan's words and let's blast it to the American people,' Ford said upon launching the campaign. 'We're going to repeat that message to every Republican district there is right across the entire country.' The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute the ad takes the former U.S. president's words out of context and says they are 'reviewing its legal options in this matter.'