US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have wrapped up talks in South Korea to see if the world’s two leading economies can reach a trade war truce and set the stage for a broader dialogue in the coming months.
The two leaders are expected to agree during their October 30 sit down to a framework for managing their economic ties and charting a path forward from protracted trade hostilities that could include agreements covering tariffs, China’s near monopoly on the supply of rare-earth minerals, fentanyl, and Chinese purchases of US soybeans.
It is not yet clear if any agreement has been reached and a readout from the talks has not been released.
But moments before talks began, Trump also added a new issue when he announced that he has instructed the Pentagon to break Washington’s voluntary moratorium on testing nuclear weapons “immediately.”
Trump said in a post to social media that the United States “has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country,” naming Russia as second and China “a distant third, but will be even within 5 years.”
Both Xi and Trump were seen leaving after 90 minutes of talks before exiting the air base together at Gimhae International Airport in Busan. Xi left in his motorcade and is set to stay in South Korea, while Trump boarded Air Force One to return to the United States.
Analysts told RFE/RL that they see limited room for a broader agreement during the talks, but that dialing back trade tensions could lay the groundwork for discussions for a larger deal around Trump’s planned visit to China early next year.
In their opening remarks, both leaders praise one another.
Trump said he believed the two would “have a fantastic relationship for a long period of time,” while Xi said it was natural that the United States and China would “not always see eye to eye” and added that it was “normal for the two leading economies of the world to have frictions now and then.”
Heading into the talks, Trump and Xi were also expected to discuss other points of tension, including Taiwan and China’s support for Russia.
Ukraine and its allies called on Trump to pressure Xi Jinping over China’s backing of Russia prior to the sit down and the meeting comes a week after Washington announced sanctions on two major Russian oil companies.
China is the single-largest buyer of Russian crude and has been a vital lifeline for Moscow’s energy industry amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grinding war in Ukraine, giving Trump a chance to lean on Beijing to curb purchases of Russian oil and deliver a blow to the vital energy revenues funding Moscow’s war.
Trump said he planned to raise Chinese oil buying with Xi but many analysts believe that the US president would instead aim to use the talks to focus on other economic priorities.
“Trump has not really pressed Beijing on this issue because of his other priorities with Xi Jinping,” Dennis Wilder, who was a top White House China adviser to former U.S. President George W. Bush, told RFE/RL.
