In Asia, a chance for Trump to show US and world that he’s still in charge

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The White House appears well aware that the political setback the midterms dealt President Donald Trump were big news around the world – and that on ...

The White House appears well aware that the political setback the midterms dealt President Donald Trump were big news around the world – and that on this high-profile Asia trip, he has some image-repairing to do.

President Donald Trump is not a fan of long overseas travel, and the kind of trip he is embarking on to Asia – with its vast distances and multiple time zones – has been particularly grueling for presidents in the past half-century.

But foreign travel also has its positive aspects for presidents, especially when it falls after adverse midterm elections, as does Mr. Trump’s trip to the Philippines and China.

Travel gets presidents out of Washington as the triumphant opposition explores its coming powers. It also allows them to exercise their unequaled authority in the foreign policy arena and to remind audiences, foreign and domestic, that they remain in charge.

On his first overseas trip since the punishing midterm elections, President Donald Trump’s meetings with Asian leaders, and especially China’s Xi Jinping, offer him the opportunity to change the narrative and reassert his foreign policy authority.

President Trump is expected to demonstrate all of this as he meets with Southeast Asian leaders in Manila, Philippines, on Tuesday, and with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other Asia-Pacific leaders in Shenzhen, China, later in the week.

Topping it all off could be a tripartite summit that is in the works to bring together Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the kind of power display that Mr. Trump is known to relish.

“A high-profile meeting with Xi and Putin is a personal priority for Trump,” says Jacob Stokes, deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

President Trump “looks at the traditional format in which consequential meetings of the world’s powerful leaders have taken place, and he’s attracted to that.

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