US President Donald Trump prepares to greet Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of bilateral talks at Gimhae Air Base in Busan, South Korea, on October 30, 2025.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
US President Donald Trump said his visit to China scheduled for later this month could be delayed as the US seeks to pressure China to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, highlighting a new flare-up in already fragile bilateral relations.
In an interview with the Financial Times on Sunday, President Trump said he hoped China would help lift the strait blockade before traveling to Beijing for a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping scheduled for March 31-April 2.
Trump added that the two weeks before the meeting is a “long” period and that the US hopes to have clarity by then. President Trump told the FT that “it may be postponed,” without elaborating on the timing.
The remarks came as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Chinese Treasury Secretary He Lifeng in Paris to discuss the upcoming summit. The Chinese government has not yet confirmed a date, and such plans are typically announced closer to the scheduled start.
This will be the first visit by a US president since President Trump’s last visit in 2017. This will also be the first visit between the two leaders in five months since they met in Busan, South Korea. So the two leaders agreed to a one-year truce in the trade war, which saw retaliatory tariffs briefly rise to triple-digit levels last year.
China’s top diplomat Wang Yi said earlier this month that the topic of exchanges was already “on the table.”
President Trump said on Air Force One on Sunday that China gets about 90% of its oil through the strait, and characterized Beijing’s cooperation on Hormuz as a matter of self-interest. The president called on several countries in Europe and Asia, including China, to help open the barrier through which about a fifth of the world’s daily oil supply passes.
But the numbers suggest Beijing may be more insulated from the strait closure and soaring oil prices than President Trump’s comments suggest.
China has spent the past two decades diversifying its energy sources and building strategic reserves to cushion the blow of prolonged disruption. As of January, the Chinese government had an estimated 1.2 billion barrels of oil stored on land, enough to meet three to four months’ worth of demand.
Seaborne oil imports through the strait currently account for less than half of China’s total oil shipments, said Rush Doshi, director of China strategic initiatives at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington-based think tank. Nomura also estimated that oil flows through Hormuz account for only 6.6% of China’s total energy consumption.
Satellite images tracked by a maritime research firm showed that Iran has continued to ship large quantities of crude oil to China since the war broke out late last month.
“bluff”
Edward Fishman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Beijing is unlikely to comply with Trump’s request to send naval vessels to help reopen the strait, and the president is not serious about canceling the Beijing summit.
Fishman dismissed Trump’s comments as a “bluff.”
“The bet on clean energy that China made more than a decade ago to become the world’s largest producer of solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles is now clearly paying off,” Fishman said, adding that Beijing stands to further benefit as world leaders accelerate the shift to alternative energy sources in the wake of the Iran conflict.
“And that’s going to give China a lot of leverage, because China holds the keys to all of these technologies,” Fishman said.
Both countries appear to be gradually increasing pressure ahead of the high-stakes summit in Beijing. The United States has launched trade investigations into a wide range of countries over suspected overcapacity and failures to address forced labor.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Monday that the Trump administration had “again abused the Section 301 investigation process to override domestic law over international rules” and called the investigation “highly one-sided, arbitrary and discriminatory.”
The Chinese government announced that it had formally lodged a complaint with the US government regarding the investigation. “We call on the U.S. side to immediately correct its wrong practices and hold talks with China halfway,” a ministry spokesperson said, calling for a solution through dialogue and negotiation.
The ministry said it would closely monitor developments in the investigation and take unspecified measures to protect China’s interests.
—CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng and Penny Chen contributed to this report.
