Trump Seeks to Delay Meeting With China’s Xi by One Month Due to Iran War

Udumbara Udumbara
Mar 17, 2026 - 10:49 Updated: Mar 17, 2026 - 10:43
0
Trump Seeks to Delay Meeting With China’s Xi by One Month Due to Iran War

.

President Donald Trump says the United States has requested to postpone a scheduled meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping by “a month or so” due to the United States’ ongoing war with Iran.

“We’re speaking to China,” he said, adding that he’d love to visit Beijing. “But, because of the war, I want to be here. I have to be here. We’ve requested that we delay it a month or so, and I’m looking forward to being with them.”

The president said his administration has a very good relationship with China, but cited the war as a reason to delay the meeting.

“There’s no tricks to it either,” Trump said. “It’s not like, ‘Oh gee, I’m waiting.’ It’s very simple. We’ve got a war going on. I think it’s important that I be here. So it could be that we delay it a little bit—not much.”

The planned summit, originally scheduled to take place in Beijing from March 31 to April 2, may not happen due to the conflict in Iran that began with the U.S.-Israeli strikes at the end of February.

Meanwhile, the president has asked China to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open, but so far China hasn’t responded directly to the request. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said the potential delay of Trump’s meeting with Xi is unrelated to how China responds to the U.S. president’s request.
.
“If the meetings are delayed, it wouldn’t be delayed because the president demanded that China police the Strait of Hormuz,” Bessent said in an interview with CNBC’s Brian Sullivan in Paris on Monday. “If the meeting, for some reason, is rescheduled, it would be rescheduled because of logistics.”

Iran has tried to cripple shipping through the critical waterway, which gives passage to approximately one-fifth of global oil trade and is key to China’s energy imports.

“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the Strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” Trump told the Financial Times earlier.
Trump also requested that other nations dependent upon the Strait to help secure the waterway. Oil prices increased to $106 per barrel in the wake of recent developments.
The Iran conflict came to a head after Trump announced “major combat operations” on Feb. 28 in order to eliminate “imminent threats” from Tehran’s regime.

The strikes were launched on the heels of the most recent round of U.S.–Iran nuclear talks, which failed to result in an agreement, following months of economic strife and protests in Iran. The United States and Israeli operations aimed to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons development and eliminate its ballistic missile capabilities.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate blocked measures to limit the president’s military actions against Iran.
.
Read More