Why Trump shouldn’t give Xi a damned thing in coming summit

President Donald Trump heads to China this Thursday in an extremely strong position, but Xi Jinping will try to bluff him into some concessions.

One such gambit came late last week, as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi scurried off to Beijing, looking for support against Washington, only for Xi to publicly call on Tehran to end its Strait of Hormuz blockade and come to terms with the Americans.

That’s supposed to make Trump feel grateful — as if an end to hostilities weren’t entirely in China’s interests, since 40% of its oil comes through the Strait.

Equally laughable is the idea that the president should bribe Xi to release oil from China’s strategic reserve to help keep global prices down: Beijing would be the main beneficiary of any release; this is just a bid to be paid extra to do what you would anyway.

Fact is, China needs to do something; its economy is in a rapid slowdown, with all manner of debt issues that could send it into a tailspin.

Trump, meanwhile, presides over a US economy chugging along despite wartime worries — and one that’s growing ever less dependent on China, thanks to Trump policies going back to his first term and accelerating now with a series of deals and domestic reforms securing new US rare-earth supply lines.

Behind all this, our president knows full well that Xi is playing a long game to displace America as the world’s preeminent power — a game Trump is determined to shut down.

This includes moves like blocking Beijing’s bid to control the Panama Canal, moving Venezuela and its oil from China’s camp to ours and neutralizing Xi’s ally Iran while also exposing the impotence of China-provided defenses against US and Israel warplanes.

The Iran war’s launch prompted Trump to postpone his China trip by two months — and has now left him in a far stronger position.

Back then, it looked like our president might agree to Xi’s demands that he downgrade US-Taiwan relations, perhaps even block his $11 billion arms deal with the island democracy.

Now if Xi complains about Taiwan, Trump should just tell him to talk directly with Taipei, as he’s refused to do for over a decade.

More, Trump can demand Beijing finally start making good on its past promises to crimp its fentanyl-precursor exports, if it doesn’t want to show up on the list of major illegal-drug suppliers that Uncle Sam will release in September.

China should also beware repercussions if it keeps up what the White House calls “industrial scale” theft of US AI models and its other intellectual-property robbery, as well as its Volt Typhoon efforts to implant malware in key US computer systems.

More: Enough with the espionage,from the infamous Biden-era spy balloon to massive data theft from the federal government; get your secret police off our soil.

Xi doesn’t want a world war any more than Trump does; he watches for weakness and moves swiftly but subtly to exploit it — and presidents who rush to compromise, or worse seek to “manage America’s decline,” have shown weakness.

Trump’s been strengthening our country’s position all across the board; he shouldn’t give Xi a thing.