Trump insists US-China relations are in a good place despite differences as he wraps up Beijing trip

BEIJING (AP) — As President Donald Trump wraps up his whirlwind visit to China on Friday, he’s insistent that relations between the world’s two biggest powers are good and getting better despite deep differences on Iran, Taiwan and more.

Trump started his last day in Beijing by insisting in a social media post that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had “congratulated me on so many tremendous successes” and had been referring only to his predecessor, former U.S. President Joe Biden, when he “very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation.”

But Trump’s rosy outlook on the U.S.-China relationship collides with some difficult truths about the thorniest issues between the two superpowers.

Beijing has shown little public interest in U.S. entreaties to get more involved in solving the conflict in Iran, even though Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Xi had in their conversations offered to help. And the White House believes China can still do more to stem the flow of Chinese-made precursor chemicals into Mexico used to make illicit fentanyl that has wreaked havoc on many U.S. communities.

Xi, meanwhile, warned Trump during private talks that their differences on the self-ruled island of Taiwan, ...