US President Donald Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday (October 30) in South Korea, the White House confirmed.
“On Thursday morning local time, President Trump will participate in a bilateral meeting with President Xi of the People’s Republic of China,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a briefing on Thursday.
The meeting between the two leaders will take place at the end of a trip by the US president to Asia, which will begin in Malaysia, continue to Japan and conclude in South Korea, where this year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit is being held.
While Trump has said multiple times that he would meet with Xi in South Korea, no date had previously been announced. The meeting will take place in Busan before the official start of the main Apec summit, which runs from October 31 to November 1.
The meeting between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies comes as relations between the US and China hit new lows in recent weeks, after Beijing threatened to tighten its grip on strategic rare earth minerals, while Washington warned of heightened tariffs and expanded controls on critical software.
Trump had briefly threatened to scrap the meeting amid the trade war flare-up, but on Wednesday said he hoped for a deal “on everything”.
Speaking on Thursday, the president said he will bring up “some big issues” to Xi like “[US] farmers”, but the “first question” that he’ll ask him will be about fentanyl, a reference to Washington’s accusation that the Chinese government has failed to curb exports of the drug’s precursor chemicals, contributing to the American opioid crisis.
Analysts in Washington have warned to keep expectations low for the leaders’ meeting.
“Both sides are approaching the relationship with confidence. Both sides believe that the other needs them more than they do. And ultimately, both sides believe that they have the upper hand,” said a former senior US government official.
“Both sides believe they have escalation dominance – [a] very, very dangerous place to be.”
According to Leavitt, Trump will leave Washington on Friday and arrive in Malaysia on Sunday local time for the Asean summit – a meeting he skipped several times during his first term.
He will also host bilateral meetings with the leaders of Japan, Malaysia and South Korea during his trip, Leavitt added.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and his counterpart, Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng, are scheduled to meet in Malaysia later this week to lay the groundwork for the Trump-Xi summit. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
