Trumps agenda for Xis visit: Get tough

It’ll be all smiles and warmth as China’s Xi Jinping visits the White House this week, but plenty of tough talk behind closed doors — since Beijing has been helping Tehran kill Americans and sending Moscow crucial help to prolong a war President Donald Trump wants ended now.The prez will surely push his guest hard on these points, and he’s got the leverage: New sanctions powers will let him hit China hard if it keeps backing Russia.Plus, Xi knows his economy is on dangerously dicey ground with growth stalled far below any healthy level; the United States could use a break from the trade war, but China is desperate to return to a stable path.As it is, Beijing risks losing more foreign markets: Europeans are getting sick of seeing China’s surplus production dumped on them.Xi may beg Trump for what seem empty concessions, such as again calling for Taiwan’s status quo to remain — but that status quo has Beijing steadily encroaching on the free island’s turf, so he needs to call out China’s bullying, not seem to endorse it.As we mentioned the other day, a good test of whether Xi truly wants to get along at all is Jimmy Lai, the world’s No.1 political prisoner.Trump in late 2024 said that winning Lai’s release would be “easy”: If Xi balks, he’s not the rational negotiator our president thought he was....