President Xi Jinping has been invited to US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony in January, according to CBS News – which has cited Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.
Leavitt said that the invitation was an example of Trump “creating an open dialogue with leaders of countries that are not just [US] allies but our adversaries and our competitors too.” She also noted that it wasn’t clear whether Xi had accepted the invitation.
If Xi – or any other foreign leader – attends the ceremony, it will be a first. While ambassadors and other diplomats are typically invited to these inaugurations, records dating back 150 years from the State Department show that no foreign leaders have attended a US presidential inauguration.
[See more: Trump threatens new tariffs on China from ‘day one’ of his presidency]
The reported invitation was also curious in light of the facts that Trump has said he will dramatically increase tariffs on Chinese-made products entering the US (the threat of which is causing Beijing to consider weakening the yuan). The two countries are also engaged in a heated tech war and several members of the US president-elect’s inner circle are sharply critical of Beijing, which Washington regards as its chief geopolitical rival.
However, last Friday Trump told NBC News that he “got along very well” with Xi and that they “had communication as recently as this week.”
It is also understood that Hungary’s far-right Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, had been invited among other leaders to the inauguration ceremony. Since his election, Trump has made a point of spending time with world leaders, meeting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, and President Emmanuel Macron of France.
