Lyle Goldstein, the director of Defense Priorities’s Asia Program, told the Washington Examiner that Trump’s allegations would end up being more of “a passing shower than a major thunderstorm in U.S.-China relations.”
“I do not expect it to scuttle the September meeting that is still planned. After decades of watching the impact of U.S. electoral politics on U.S.-China relations, the Chinese have grown quite sophisticated in their analysis of American politics, and they are likely to realize that the speech reflected domestic political imperatives from an unpopular president confronting some very serious crises,” he said Friday. “I think Beijing is quite pleased with the outcomes of the recent Trump-Xi summit and so will be extra reticent to rock the boat or engage in rhetorical theatrics that could worsen the situation.”
Goldstein called Trump’s claims a “puzzling anomaly,” given that, in his estimation, “these allegations are not new, remain quite unsubstantiated, and likely reflect Trump’s fixation on a previous electoral loss, as well as his lingering bitterness over ‘Russiagate’ accusations that his 2016 election benefited from foreign interference.”
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