Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told “FOX News Sunday” that President Trump will be traveling to China “terribly weakened” before his meeting with Xi Jinping.

SHANNON BREAM, FOX NEWS: I want to pick up with China because you heard a lot about what we expect will be the conversation between these two presidents. The Council on Foreign Relations, their president has a blog saying this: “The world is a safer place when its two largest economies and most powerful countries are on speaking terms. As Trump wrote on Truth Social, ‘President Xi will give me a big fat hug when I get there in a few weeks. We are working together smartly and very well. Doesn’t that beat fighting?'” So what do you make of this relationship? And what would you like to see as deliverables from this meeting? SEN. JACK REED: Well, President Trump is going into this meeting terribly weakened. He has involved ourselves in a conflict with Iran. There’s a stalemate now. The Iranians are holding 20 percent of the world’s oil at risk. They’ve been — stopped it. And China, as you pointed out, is doing quite well because of their alternate energy investments, because of their coal supplies, because of their huge stockpile. So the president is going to Xi in a position of weakness, not strength. I don’t expect there’s going to be a lot obtained here because, again, Xi is looking at a president who’s in a difficult, difficult situation. And more often and more importantly, perhaps, we’ve had to withdraw materiel from the Indo-Pacific area, military personnel, military equipment, and that affects our readiness. So President Trump’s going in there, in some respects, asking for Chinese help, not demanding it. BREAM: Well, the administration goes in, they think, with a strong economic message. The fact that we had such a good jobs report here that kind of blew things out of the water on Friday. And real concerns that China’s economy is not faring as well as they would like to publicly represent. Do you not see this as a meeting of equals? REED: Well, I think this is a meeting where one country, the United States, is involved in a very difficult conflict which is cutting off 20 percent of the oil of the world. It’s affecting worldwide. As you point out previously, China is weathering probably better than most countries. The other situation is that we’re seeing at home significant gas prices, significant increases in grocery prices and in all sorts of prices for the American home. And the American people are significantly concerned about this conflict with Iran. So that’s not a strong position to be in when you’re talking to an economic and a geopolitical rival. BREAM: Is this a situation, though, of essentially having to rip off a Band-Aid? I mean, both parties, Democrats and Republicans, have said for years that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. It’s what our allies, friends and even some of our enemies around the globe have said. And yet the U.S. is the first one to step up, engage in this action. We now have many allies coming on board to additionally help with the Strait of Hormuz and this entire process. Was it that a country needed to step up and it was finally this president who said, “Yeah, we’re going to have short-term pain,” he hasn’t lied about that, he said it’s going to be brutal. But he’s saying long-term there will be benefit not only to Iran not having a nuclear weapon but also not having a chokehold on the world’s oil supply? REED: Well, President Obama stood up and we had an agreement with the Iranians that they would not produce a nuclear weapon. We had them withdraw significant amounts of their enriched uranium. We had international inspectors on the ground, and President Trump tore that up and we’re in a much worse position now. BREAM: I want to let you finish that answer, but — but just to that agreement specifically, I mean, there were a lot of loopholes in there that meant inspectors couldn’t get in to up to 24 days to inspect, and there were reports that at some points Iran was allowed to submit its own soil samples. It was allowed to do its own inspections. I mean, do you not agree there were flaws with that particular agreement? REED: Generally speaking the inspection routine was similar to that which we have with other countries and we had other means of verifying our intelligence agencies and many other aspects to verify what they were submitting but we’re in a situation now because of Trump’s discarding the JCPOA where we have no real insights into or detailed insights into their nuclear program, and they have significantly more enriched nuclear material. They’re about — it’s estimated about 9 to 12 months away if they decide and they haven’t done that to develop a nuclear weapon. We have to control their nuclear aspirations. We had controls in place. We could build on those controls. Trump took them away. We’re in a much more difficult position today, and then he started a unilateral along with Israel attack on Iran and now they’re holding the world by the oil they can control coming out of the Strait of Hormuz. So, this is a situation that may have been made much worse by the actions of Donald Trump and now he’s floundering around trying to figure out a way to get out of it, and there’s no obvious way. BREAM: Well, long term, if the Strait is reopened, Iran is disabled from getting a nuclear weapon, oil prices drop. Will you give credit to this president long term if that comes together? REED: Well, long-term I hope it comes together, frankly, because it’s in the interest of the United States and of the whole world, but we’re in a situation now that in order to negotiate agreement we have to get something to get something. The question is, what is the president willing to give up? What are the Iranians willing to accept? And they’re now in a better position than they were, ironically, several months ago for many factors. One, the regime is much more militant, hardened and committed to resisting. Two, they’ve demonstrated to the world they can choke off oil coming out of Strait of Hormuz. They have leverage worldwide now. They are also, I think, in a situation where their nuclear facilities are very difficult to disrupt, destroy, and I don’t think they’re going to just gladly sort of give off their nuclear potential. We have to have an agreement. If we could get back to the JCPOA, and I don’t think we can, that would be a huge success for the president.

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