The Financial Times Sunday reported that “Donald Trump said he could delay his planned summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping if Beijing doesn’t help unblock the Strait of Hormuz.” The publication cited its own interview with the American president as a source.
Note: Trump’s visit to China is scheduled for March 31-April 2, and would be the first for a U.S. president since Trump went to the country — America’s top economic rival — in 2017.
Trump’s call for other nations to help open up the Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian forces have snarled shipping traffic in response to attacks by the U.S. and Israel, did not draw immediate public pledges of international collaboration — with support for the mission possibly muddied by Trump’s earlier claim that Iran had already been defeated.
Still, Trump wrote this weekend on TruthSocial that China, France, Japan, South Korea, the U.K. and others had said they will send warships to the region to escort vessels and facilitate a return to shipping norms. (NOTE: Early Monday a New York Times headline contradicting the President’s posts read “U.S. Allies Rebuff Trump’s Appeal for Help in Strait of Hormuz.”)
Political scientist Ian Bremmer responded to Trump’s threatened summit delay, writing: “trump, after saying he’s won the iran war and doesn’t need help in the strait, threatens to delay xi summit if the chinese don’t come to america’s aid.”
trump, after saying he’s won the iran war and doesn’t need help in the strait, threatens to delay xi summit if the chinese don’t come to america’s aid. https://t.co/dRQuC3ECxj
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) March 16, 2026
Former State Department official Steven Schrage, also portraying about Trump’s threats as dubious, responded: “Ummm…. Don’t think that tactic’s gonna work…”
Note: Schrage worked on President George W. Bush’s policy team during the 2000 presidential campaign, served on the White House transition team, was appointed Senior Advisor in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), and then rotated to a position with the Undersecretary for Economic Affairs at the State Department.
Former U.S. Naval War College political science professor Tom Nichols chimed in with sarcasm: “The United States is demanding that China send a military presence into the Persian Gulf. Now that’s some first-rate strategery right there.”
(“Strategery” is a Saturday Night Live neologism created to mock the Middle East plans of the Bush administration. Forbes writes that the term has become a byword to describe a “flimsy veneer of forethought” or tactics being made to sound more important or “strategic” than they are.)
On Monday morning, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent seemed to contradict Trump’s assertion, telling CNBC of the forthcoming Trump/Xi meeting: “If the meetings are delayed, it wouldn’t be delayed because the president demanded that China police the Strait of Hormuz.” Bessent added, “If the meeting, for some reason, is rescheduled, it would be rescheduled because of logistics.”
In the Financial Times interview, Trump appeared to link his request for China’s assistance in the Strait of Hormuz with the summit. While not making a contingency overt, Trump said of the Chinese response that “we’d like to know before [the summit].”
Speaking of the Under Secretary of War for Policy, Nichols added another seemingly improbable scenario: “I look forward to Bridge Colby’s testimony about the strategic importance of conducting naval operations in the Gulf with the People’s Republic of China.”