Trump and Xi won’t meet until at least April

It’s come to the forefront that United States President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping won’t be meeting until at least April, according to several White House insiders. This makes sense considering that Trump has recently suggested that there was no rush to complete a trade pact with China, and that it’s more important to get protections for intellectual property, which of course has been a major problem between the two companies.

Meeting at Mar-a-Lago

The two are expected to meet at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Florida, but no actual date has been set for meeting and no talks between their trade teams have been held over the last several weeks. One of the biggest concerns about meeting at Mar-a-Lago is that Donald Trump could possibly walk away like he did with the North Koreans in Hanoi. That could set back trade relations between the two economies in a rather drastic manner.

Still much work to do

There’s still much work to do between the two economies, as the market forces between the two economies are one of the biggest supply chains in the world. As long as there are wide differences between the two countries, the trade meeting will be pushed back as Donald Trump has already suggested that he’s willing to walk away from a deal that isn’t particularly favorable.

Because of this, Beijing in Washington are working on the negotiations one item at a time, and it could take quite some time to make that happen. For that matter, it’s possible that we don’t even see a meeting in April at all, which although negative could be better than the potential disaster of some type of collapse of trade talks. At this point, everybody knows just how important this is going to be for the global economy, so a certain amount of patience makes quite a bit of sense.

For now, the stock markets are willing to give a pass

It appears that the stock markets have been able to give this situation a bit of a pass, because they understand that it’s better to have an agreement instead of some type of diplomatic break down. This is something that the market has been patient enough to deal with in order to continue to rally assuming that things will work out, so while the markets have given both China and the United States a bit of a pass on the optimism, the real danger lies in the inability to come together with some type of agreement. If that’s the case, stock markets around the world will probably take a massive nosedive.

Patience

For now, the biggest point is going to be to be patient with the process. This is an extraordinarily complex problem that has been avoided by previous administrations for at least 30 years, and the Chinese of course would prefer things to stay the way they have. The question now is whether or not the Chinese are willing to bend a bit to keep things going forward, or if they are going to play hardball. It’s obvious that Donald Trump is willing to do that, so part of this will also be a face-saving measure. As there are politicians involved, this is going to take some time.