WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is soon slated to be 5,000 miles from Washington talking soybeans and tariffs, possibly hamstringing any efforts to end the government shutdown.

With Republican and Democratic lawmakers digging into their positions about how to revive the federal machine, perhaps only presidential prodding could help end the funding stalemate. But as Trump prepares to leave for Asia late Friday night, the shutdown is set to roll on without a solution in sight.

“Given the power the president has over congressional Republicans, he is the key to how this shutdown ends,” G. William Hoagland, a former aide to Senate GOP leadership, said in a Wednesday email. “Being out of the country need not prevent negotiations going forward in his absence, but it is likely to further prolong any major agreement until he returns.

“The only time a president was out of the country during a shutdown was in 1995-1996,” Hoagland said of the government shuttering under President Bill Clinton. “But it was brief, for Anwar Sadat’s funeral, and even then Speaker Newt Gingrich was on Air Force One — but, remember, Gingrich was peeved because he had to get off the plane from the back entrance, and I doubt there was any interaction between the two of them at that time.”

Three decades have passed since, but one thing remains the same: Should lawmakers reach a deal to reopen the government while Trump is abroad, whatever legislation both chambers agree to would have to be flown to Asia for his physical signature, a White House official said, echoing the president’s near-daily dig at his predecessor Joe Biden: “No autopen.”

Trump is not expected to meet with senior congressional Democrats before his scheduled departure for Asia, the official said. And he has made clear that no such meeting would happen next week even if he canceled the trip, which includes a regional summit in Malaysia, a stop in Japan and a likely sit-down with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Korea.

“The government has to be open,” Trump told reporters Tuesday when asked if he would meet with Democratic leaders Charles E. Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries only after the Senate passes a House-approved measure to fund the government through Nov. 21. “Do you know how long it would take for them to do that? Just say, ‘OK, government’s open.’ That’s it. There is nothing. They’re not negotiating.”

But Trump and Republicans leaders aren’t either.

“I don’t know what there is to negotiate. This is about opening up the government,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said at the White House after a Tuesday lunch with the president. “We have offered them several off-ramps now. The Democrats want something that’s totally untenable.”

Under a mid-afternoon autumn sun on the White House’s north driveway, the South Dakota Republican at times appeared exasperated.

“What you do have is a bill that’s passed the House, sitting at the desk in the Senate that the president is prepared to sign, to open up the government. So I’m not sure [why] people keep saying, ‘Negotiate.’ Negotiate what? I don’t know what that is right now,” he told reporters. “The government needs to open up, and then we’re happy to sit down and talk about any other issues that Democrats want to talk about.”

Trump and top aides have given no indication that his Asia trip could be canceled or truncated. Earlier this week, the president sounded ready — even eager — to board Air Force One for the long journey to the economically critical region.

“We had presidents that allowed China and other countries [to] get away with murder. We’re not going to allow that, but we’re going to have a fair deal. I want to be good to China. I love my relationship with President Xi. We have a great relationship, I believe after we leave South Korea, we’ll be there together,” Trump said Monday.

“We thought that would be a good place to meet, and we’re going to be meeting. I’ll be in Malaysia. I’ll be in Japan. I’ll be in a couple of others. We’ll be sort of doing a little bit of a tour,” he added.

Soybean diplomacy

The White House has yet to release an agenda for the Asia trip, though Trump himself shot down any notion of Air Force One making a surprise journey into Chinese airspace.

“I’ve been invited to go to China and I’ll be doing that sometime, fairly early next year,” he said Monday. “We have it sort of set, but I think we’re going to have a very good relationship with China.”

Trump on Monday teased “meeting with a lot of other countries” during the journey, but said of his upcoming session with Xi: “This seems to be the one that people are very interested in. I think when we finish our meetings in South Korea, China and I will have a really fair and really great trade deal together.”

Call it soybean diplomacy.

“I want them to buy soybeans. They stopped buying our soybeans because they thought that was punishment. And it is punishment to our farmers,” he said the same day. “But we’re not going to allow that to happen.”

Speaking to reporters Wednesday evening, Trump predicted: “I think we’re going to make a deal on soybeans and the farmers.”

One major issue that could complicate a soybean deal is Xi’s frustration with Trump’s fentanyl tariffs and the American president’s demands that the Chinese government cut off all flows of the illicit opioid into the United States.

“The soybean boycott has its own logic separate from fentanyl, but Beijing has also dangled [the boycott’s] end in exchange for Washington reducing the fentanyl-linked tariffs. … (The) prospects for a deal stalled in late September and October,” Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote this week. “Even with a massive police state, China cannot prevent all of the ubiquitous unscheduled fentanyl precursors that are found in the legal chemistry, pharmaceutical, and agriculture industries from leaking into the illicit trade.”

Meantime, Trump also said Wednesday that he would “probably be talking” to Xi about China’s massive purchases of Russian energy products, as well as the war in Ukraine, suggesting the Chinese leader could have a “big influence” on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Back in Washington, some of Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill have spent the first three weeks of the government shutdown defending his light touch and lack of urgency in trying to end the standoff. But Thune acknowledged Tuesday that time may be nearing for direct presidential engagement.

Asked by a reporter if Trump would have to get more involved, the majority leader responded: “Well, at some point. But open up the government first.”

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