Certainly, information which leaked on the same day that the Xi Jinping – Trump summit was announced indicated clearly the Trump administration felt seriously concerned about the state of the US economy. It was leaked to Bloomberg that, in an unprecedented move, the Trump administration had explored if it was possible legally to dismiss their own appointed Chair of the US Federal Reserve Jerome Powell – who had only take up office in February 2018.  This was immediately understood to indicate that the Trump administration feared the downward pressure on the US economy.

It is important not to exaggerate. It is still 17 months to the US presidential election. This means the bad polling numbers for Trump can still be overcome – but they are clearly a negative for him. While some US analysts project a recession in 2019, for the reasons given here it is much more likely that the US economy will slow in 2019 rather than a recession occur – although if the economy slows significantly in 2019 a recession in 2020 is entirely not impossible, which would clearly be ultra- negative for Trump. But even without an actual recession what this combination of bad polling numbers and economic deceleration does produce is clearly pressure on the Trump administration.

This is not the only factor in the situation, but it is clearly part of the background to the Xi-Trump summit at the G20.

This article was finished before it was made public that the US side requested the phone call with China which led to agreement on the Xi Jinping-Trump summit. This information is in line with the analysis in the article.1111MicrosoftInternetExplorer402DocumentNotSpecified7.8 磅Normal0