Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Is Jared Kushner The Surest Path To Trump’s Ear? China Thinks So.

Donald Trump has made no secret of his feelings about China. He has accused the rival economic giant of stealing American jobs with nefarious trade policies and sparked a brief diplomatic tiff by calling Taiwan’s premier.

But the Chinese believe they have a way of smoothing the waters — and his name is Jared Kushner.

Chinese officials have assiduously, some might say obsessively, courted the president’s Jewish son-in-law, the New York Times reports.

“Having access to the president’s family and somebody they see as a princeling is even better,” Evan S. Medeiros, a senior director for Asia in the Obama administration, told the paper.

China’s ambassador to the U.S. talks to Kushner regularly and even invited Kushner and his wife, Ivanka, to a Chinese Lunar New Year celebration.

Critics note that Kushner’s family real estate business has extensive ties with Chinese firms — even though a megadeal for 666 Fifth Ave recently fell through.

The buttering up may be working.

Chinese President President Xi Jinping will visit the U.S. this week and scored a coveted invitation to rub elbows with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.