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Trump-Xi Meeting in Iowa Would Be Poignant Reminder of Better US-China Ties

Reuters

   WASHINGTON - U.S. President Donald Trump's suggestion that he could
   sign a trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Iowa has set off
   a flurry of excitement in Muscatine, Iowa, a city on the banks of the
   Mississippi River that has hosted Xi twice since 1985.

   Xi received a key to the 24,000-population city during his first visit,
   when he led an agricultural study group and stayed at the home of a
   local family. He also met and befriended then-governor Terry Branstad,
   who is now Trump's ambassador to Beijing.

   Xi returned with much fanfare in 2012 as China's vice president,
   visiting that home and meeting with a dozen local "Old Friends" -
   people he had met in the 1980s.

   Those were more hopeful times in U.S.-China relations, before Trump
   kicked off a debilitating tit-for-tat tariff war, and the U.S.
   Secretary of State declared Xi's ruling Communist Party "truly hostile
   to the United States and our values."

   U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators are now racing to complete the text
   of a "phase one" agreement that could defuse the 16-month trade war.
   Tariffs have had an outsized impact on farmers in Iowa, a big exporter
   of soybeans.

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