Trump downplays Taiwan risk in China talks, expects fair trade deal

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

50% : These statements come ahead of a planned meeting between Trump and Xi.
50% : " Trump suggested to reporters that China had no designs on invading Taiwan but acknowledged he expected the issue to be on the agenda at a planned meeting with Xi on the sidelines of an economic conference in South Korea next week.
50% : Trump spoke at the start of a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese where the two signed a critical minerals agreement aimed at countering China.
50% : Trump pledged to accelerate deliveries of nuclear submarines to Australia and was asked if U.S. actions in the waters of the Indo-Pacific were a sufficient deterrent to keep Xi from invading Taiwan.
50% : "China doesn't want to do that," Trump said, before boasting about the size and strength of the U.S. military.
50% : Asked by a reporter whether the U.S. might adjust its position on Taiwan independence in order to reach a trade deal with China, Trump said, "We're going to be talking about a lot of things.
50% : I assume that will be one of them, but I'm not going to talk about it now." Speaking in Taipei, Wang Liang-yu, head of the Taiwan foreign ministry's North American Affairs Department, said Taiwan-U.S. communication is "quite smooth", and that since Trump took office, the U.S. has repeatedly reiterated its support for Taiwan.
46% : " But U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer took a tougher line later in the day, warning the U.S. would respond with unspecified action to what he called a "broader pattern of economic coercion" by Beijing against firms that make strategic investments in critical U.S. industries.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.