Rubio says US and China are at "strategic stability" ahead of historic Trump trip to Beijing
Basseterre, Saint Kitts and Nevis - Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the US and China are sitting in a position of "strategic stability" as the two nations gear up for President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing in April.
"I think we've reached a point at least of a sort of strategic stability in the relationship," Rubio told reporters on Wednesday during a press conference on the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts and Nevis.
"I think both countries concluded that having an all-out global trade war between the United States and China would be deeply damaging to both sides and to the world," Rubio said.
Rubio has long been a hawk on China, casting the world's second-largest economy as an adversary that needs to be defeated.
This view fueled a brutal trade war that lasted from April of last year until relations began to cool in late October, which at one point saw a tariff rate of 145% imposed on Beijing.
Rubio said that the US would keep raising concerns and seek to further diversify away from China's dominant supply chains. He also vowed to keep pushing China to negotiate a three-way nuclear deal with the US and Russia.
"They have publicly said they're not willing to do it," Rubio said of China's resistance to a new nuclear deal. "We'll continue to press on it because we think it would be good for the world if we could reach such an agreement."
His comments come days after the US accused China of conducting nuclear explosive tests and undertaking an "unprecedented" expansion of its nuclear arsenal.
Trump is set to travel to China from March 31 to April 2. Rubio is expected to accompany him, as he is also the president's national security advisor.
Cover photo: AFP/Jonathan Ernst/POOL
