America wants some Chinese attention as well
Commerce officials heading to China to lay groundwork for possible Raimondo trip later this year, sources say
Senior officials from the Department of Commerce will be traveling to Beijing and Shanghai next week as part of an effort to lay groundwork for a potential trip by Secretary Gina Raimondo later this year, according to people familiar with the planning.
Elizabeth Economy, a senior advisor to the secretary on China issues, and Scott Tatlock, the deputy assistant secretary for China and Mongolia, will assess whether such a meeting between Raimondo and her Chinese counterparts would produce results to justify the visit.
Specifically mentioning Airbus here can only mean that Boeing is at least partly behind this planned visitBut the optics of a potential visit by Raimondo — the former governor of Rhode Island whose political ambitions are said not to end with the Commerce job — could be fraught with risk if the visit produces no deliverables, according to the people familiar with the planning. After a recent visit by French President Emmanuel Macron, for instance, Beijing agreed to deliver 160 Airbus planes, and Airbus agreed to double its production in the country.