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Warren Outlines Goals for Diplomacy Ahead of Trip to Asia

Will meet with South Korean, Chinese, and Japanese officials

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, right, and Tina Smith talk before a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing in Dirksen Building titled “The Opioid Crisis: Leadership and Innovation” earlier this month. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, right, and Tina Smith talk before a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing in Dirksen Building titled “The Opioid Crisis: Leadership and Innovation” earlier this month. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

Ahead of a trip to Asia this week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren outlined her goals for diplomacy in an op-ed for the Boston Globe.

Warren, who is running for re-election this year, will meet with officials from China, South Korea and Japan.

The Massachusetts Democrat said she agrees there is no military-only option for North Korea and was “glad to see” that President Donald Trump, the man who frequently mocks her as “Pocahontas,” was open to meeting with the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un.

But Warren also expressed skepticism and said North Korean dictators have long wanted a meeting with the U.S.

“I support talking to our adversaries, but we should be skeptical that he is negotiating in good faith and is willing to halt his nuclear expansion even as he snatches the trophy of a picture with an American president,” she wrote.

Warren also criticized the Trump administration for lacking an ambassador to South Korea and leaving many other diplomatic positions vacant.

“To achieve our national goals, we need a State Department operating at full capacity,” she wrote.

Warren joined the Senate Armed Services Committee last year and is considered a potential candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

But as a former Harvard Law professor who rose to national prominence overseeing the 2008 bailout of financial institutions during the Great Recession, much of her focus has been on economic policy.

Warren emphasized that to have a strong foreign policy, the U.S. needs to build a strong economy at home.

“It means we should run a trade policy — including tariffs where necessary — that works for American workers, not just for multinational corporations,” she wrote. “But it also means we must recognize that trade should serve our larger foreign policy goals, not the other way around.”

Watch: Where to Find a Mountain Inside a Senate Office Building

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