President Donald Trump's summit with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un has been praised as "great political theater" (it was); "historic" (not); and a "great first step" (time will tell). But it is not too soon to congratulate President Xi Jinping of China on his enormous victory. He won a cancellation of U.S. war games on the Korean peninsula, which the Communists have always been terrified of because they could become a cover for an invasion, and a genuine promise from the U.S. to pour money into economic development in North Korea, one of the poorest nations in the world, in return for "progress" on "denuclearization."

He got all of this without any demands by the United States to improve human rights in Korea (any improvement there would encourage China's own vocal dissidents to demand more freedom for the Chinese) and no verifiable destruction of offensive weapons such as long-range missiles that threaten Japan and perhaps the United States.

If President Trump were making progress on the essential issue of relations with China, perhaps these gifts to the Chinese president might be worth the cost but, so far, the Chinese have deftly handled Trump and little progress has been made in protecting intellectual property in China including the proprietary technology of American companies.

Trump could make progress there by patching things up with the Europeans, but so far he thinks he can extract more from them and he has demurred on a grand coalition. He also withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership which, if he had remained in, might also have given the United States more leverage in negotiating with the Chinese.

It looks more and more as if America has lost, but maybe the president will yet salvage something from his deal-making (a Trump Tower in the Forbidden City perhaps)?

Robert Leslie Fisher

Delmar