Former Reagan Adviser: Trump Team Not in Place for Chinese Summit

Former American defense policy adviser Dr. Michael Pillsbury warned Chinese President Xi Jinping may boast an advantage in his summit with President Donald Trump this week, since the president does not have his entire economic team in place.

Pillsbury, who served under former President Ronald Reagan and has written extensively about China, noted that this week has been filled to the brim with important events for Trump, during an interview Wednesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.” This week alone includes a Senate confirmation vote over Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch and meetings with the leaders of Jordan and Egypt.

“It just seems like that’s a lot — it’s a lot to deal with before you have your USTR in place, and, frankly, a clear policy even sold to the American people on the way we should deal with China and North Korea.”

“There ought to be preparation. There ought to be a team in place. The first meeting should be two or three days and it should have some ‘deliverables,’ as we like to say,” Pillsbury said. “This looks like there’s no deliverables.”

Noting that Trump has tweeted “many times” about China’s lack of support in suppressing North Korean aggression, Pillsbury said that the Chinese officials calculated it to be to their advantage if they met with Trump early on in his administration.

“Well, he’s certainly correct that the clock has been ticking a long time for China to help us more with North Korea. I don’t think that’s going to happen, myself. It isn’t — it just doesn’t look like it,” Pillsbury said.

But Trump’s administration isn’t even fully formed, Pillsbury noted. Most importantly, Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s nominee to serve as the U.S. Trade Representative, hasn’t yet been confirmed.

“It just seems like that’s a lot — it’s a lot to deal with before you have your USTR in place, and, frankly, a clear policy even sold to the American people on the way we should deal with China and North Korea,” Ingraham noted.

Pillsbury said that the Chinese officials’ insistence “makes sense if you know the Chinese are the ones who sought the meeting. They’ve been working on this since November.”

“So, somehow, if I were the Chinese — and I’ve written a lot about this — I would take initiative,” Pillsbury said. “I’d get the drop on Mr. Trump, certainly try to hurt the hawks around him — the Chinese have been writing a lot about them. They sort of demonized three or four people in Mr. Trump’s team.”

When Pillsbury noted that Trump Senior Adviser Jared Kushner wanted to “be in charge of the contact,” Ingraham expressed her concerns that warring ideologies within the White House may have contributed to the early Chinese visit before Trump was fully prepared for it.

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“A populist-conservative ideology got Trump elected — and a pragmatic foreign policy and nationalist economic policy got Trump elected,” Ingraham said. “And I think his agenda is being undermined from within the West Wing right now, and that’s what I’m worried about, Mike.”

Pillsbury agreed, saying, “Well, just what you’re saying right now, Laura, can be found in the Chinese press. The Chinese sort of know this, and they’re explicitly playing off the two sides.”