Trump will travel to Beijing on May 14 and 15 for a rescheduled summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the White House announced Wednesday, after shifting the trip dates amid the ongoing war in Iran. The announcement came as President Donald Trump had been scheduled to head to China later this month before announcing a delay, according to the White House briefing described in the Associated Press report.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president and first lady Melania Trump also plan to host Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, for a White House visit later this year. When Leavitt was asked at a briefing whether the new May dates suggested the administration believed the Iran war could end soon, she responded with what the AP described as an optimistic tone, saying, “We’ve always estimated four to six weeks,” and adding, “So you could do the math.”
Leavitt’s remarks were the latest public indication that the administration’s planning timeline for the China trip has been influenced by the pace of U.S.-backed efforts related to Iran. The AP reported that the United States and Israel launched the attacks against Iran on Feb. 28, and that the conflict has continued even as Washington presses Tehran to accept a ceasefire proposal.
The AP also described how the China trip, which had been planned for months, began to unravel as Trump pushed China and other world powers to use military might to help protect the Strait of Hormuz. The report said the strait has been effectively closed as Iran targets energy infrastructure and traffic through it, complicating the backdrop against which U.S.-China diplomacy is taking place.
According to the AP, Trump said last week during a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in the Oval Office that he would be going to China in five or six weeks instead of at the end of the month. Trump characterized the change as “resetting” his visit with Xi, and he told reporters then that his counterparts were “fine with it” and that he looked forward to seeing Xi, with Xi likewise looking forward to seeing him.
The rescheduled Beijing trip is also being viewed, by the AP, as an opportunity to build on a fragile trade truce between the two superpowers. However, the report said the effort to find an endgame in the Iran war has become tangled with the timing of the China visit, including Trump’s stated indications that his travel plans could depend on Beijing’s response to the conflict.
While the May visit will focus on Trump’s diplomacy with Xi, it comes at a time when the U.S. and its allies are still navigating the wider regional security and energy stakes tied to Iran. The White House’s scheduling decision, as reflected in Leavitt’s comments and the AP’s account of the announcement, keeps those pressures tightly linked to Washington’s broader engagement with Beijing.