Dont be fooled Trumps red-carpet rollout for Xi is a strategic coup

President Donald Trump was waiting, military honor guard and all, when Xi Jinping stepped off his plane Wednesday in Maryland.  It was the first time in both terms of Trump’s presidency that he personally received a visiting foreign leader on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews.So what did Xi do to deserve this unusual honor?A better question: Why is Trump flattering Xi’s ego by treating him as the world’s most important visiting dignitary?  A decade ago, such ceremonial pomp might have been taken as a sign of American weakness and Chinese strength.  Today, however, it’s the opposite.China’s initiative to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is failing.  Xi himself was basically sidelined at this month’s BRICS summit in India; he skipped the obligatory banquet and left a day early.  Media apologists claimed he was tired, but it’s more likely that he was just tired of being ignored.  Now, just two weeks later, the American president’s impressive show of hospitality — giving him “face,” as it’s known in Chinese culture — not only massages Xi’s ego, it also provides useful propaganda fodder for his captive audience back in China.  And it costs America nothing.Trump, on the other hand, has cost China dearly.  He has radically reduced China’s inroads into the Western Hemisphere, ousting its agents from Venezuela and the Panama Canal.With the Cuban dictatorship apparently unable to keep the lights on, and China now permanently shut out of Greenland, Beijing’s losses in the Americas appear certain to keep piling up.Add to this Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s “Economic D-Day” sanctions on Iran.These are disrupting China’s financial ties with the Islamist regime, even as Iran’s attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and its threat of tolls hammer Beijing’s energy imports: China already pays $25 a barrel more for oil than the rest of the world. China’s leader also has major headaches back hom...