China still refuses to blink in looming trade war with U.S.

President Trump has framed conflict as a necessary fight.

TOKYO — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered Wednesday to permanently dismantle the country’s main nuclear site, but only if the United States makes concessions first.

President Donald Trump called the developments encouraging but made no new commitments.

Leaving the White House on Wednesday, Trump said that “we’re making tremendous progress with respect to North Korea” and took credit for changing a dynamic under which he said it once seemed “inevitable” that the United States would go to war with the country.

Now he and Kim have a cordial relationship that included a “tremendous letter” from the North Korean leader this week, Trump said.

“It’s very much calmed dow n,” he said. “We’re talking. It’s very calm. He’s calm. I’m calm.”

Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in have been meeting in Pyongyang in an attempt to push forward their peace process, as well as advance dialogue with the United States. Standing side by side after their second day of talks, they declared that they had made a major step toward an “era of peace and prosperity” on the Korean Peninsula.

Kim pledged to visit the South Korean capital, Seoul, in what would be a first for a North Korean leader. He also pledged to allow in “external inspectors” to verify that a key missile test site has been

North and South Korea will jointly pursue a bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics, representatives announced in a news conference Wednesday in Pyongyang, North Korea.

The bid is part of a larger move toward peace on the Korean Peninsula, with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreeing on the first steps toward denuclearization and peace. No immediate details about the Olympic bid, such as which cities would host it, were revealed.

The two Koreas also said they would work toward forming a joint Korean team for the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, a decision that was praised by Ahn Min-seok, a South Korean lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Party. Last February, South Korea hosted the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, with athletes from the two countries forming a unified women’s ice hockey team.

A successful 2032 bid would bring the Summer Games to the peninsula for the first time since Seoul hosted the 1988 competition. Brisbane, Australia, plans to bid for the 2032 Games, and Germany has announced plans for a multi-city bid. After Tokyo, the Summer Games will move to Paris in 2024 and Los Angeles in 2028.

Beijing is the site of the 2022 Winter Olympics. disabled.

Later, Moon, who has fervently pursued engagement

the North, made history by addressing an audience of 150,000 people at a perfor- mance of the “mass games,” North Korea’s synchronized gymnastics and dance show.

have lived together for 5,000 years and been separated for 70 years,” he told the audience in the huge May Day Stadium. “We must live together as one people.”

The talks were supposed to enhance cooperation between the two Koreas, as well as pave the way for a second summit between Kim and Trump later this year.

Experts said it was far from clear that Kim had made con- cessions that would make a summit an attractive proposition for the U.S. admin- istration, but Trump him- self reacted positively, calling the news “very exciting” on Twitter.

“We had very good news from North Korea, South Korea. They met, and we had some great responses,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday morning.

“A lot of tremendous things. But very importantly, no missile testing, no nuclear testing,” Trump said.

He not ed w ith appa r- ent approval that the latest inter-Korean summit included a proposal for a potential joint North Kore- an-South Korean bid for the Olympic Games, adding, “We

a lot of very good things going.”

Trump said nothing about a potential second summit with Kim, with whom he met in Singapore in June.

Trump is expected to meet with Moon on Monday in New York, when both attend the annual United Nations General Assembly. Moon is expected to use the meeting to urge further U.S.-North Korean engagement.

In Pyongyang, Kim focused on relations with South Korea. The two Koreas are still technically at war 65 years after an armistice ended the Korean War.

Talks between the United States and North Korea have reached an impasse over who should make the next move. Washington wants Pyongyang to take a meaningful step toward dismantling its nuclear weapons program. North Korea, however, is pushing for the U.S. to declare the 1950-1953 Korean War formally over, and claims Trump made a promise to that effect in Singapore. BEIJING — China’s second highest-ranking official delivered a confident message Wednesday amid the looming trade war with the United States: Beijing will survive.

The remarks from Premier Li Keqiang to a crowd in the port city of Tianjin seemed directed at President Donald Trump — with- out invoking his name — as fresh tariff announcements bring the United States and China closer to an all-out out trade war.

“China’s development over the past decades has always been achieved by overcoming all sorts of different obstacles and challenges,” he said, a day after Beijing pledged to immediately punch back at Trump’s next round of tariffs on $200 billion in Chi- nese imports with levies on an additional $60 billion in American goods.

“Each time, we managed to pull through,” Li added.

Trump has framed the conflict as a necessary fight, argu- ing China has been breaking the global trade rules for years at the expense of American workers. The battle is popular among some labor groups: Union leaders in the Midwest have long blasted China for luring away fac- tories with cheaper labor, and the White House has accused Beijing of stealing intellectual property from U.S. companies that enter its market.

The looming onslaught of tariffs, Trump has said, should pressure Beijing to change its ways.

“China has been taking advantage of the United States on Trade for many years,” he tweeted Tuesday. “They also know that I am the one that knows how to stop it.”

If the Chinese government follows through with its threat to retaliate Monday, Trump has pledged to strike back with duties on $267 billion in Chinese products. At that point, both sides will have nearly run out of imports to target.

Subject to tariffs of up to 10 percent are electronics, furniture, chemicals, handbags, spark plugs, human hair — items ordinary and niche that have become shipping container fixtures over the four-decade commercial relationship.

Neither country can avoid paininthis trade war, economists warn. The cost of household goods is expected to rise, since global supply chains weave through the Asian nation. Chinese economists predict layoffs in the country’s manufacturing sector. American farmers and business owners, meanwhile, fear they’ll lose access to the lucrative Chinese market: a middle class of consumers larger than the entire U.S. population.