Trump-Xi talks under way in Beijing, with US targeting trade, business wins on second day of summit
‘We’ve made some fantastic trade deals, great for both countries,’ says Trump
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[BEIJING] US President Donald Trump met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing’s leadership compound on Friday, kickstarting a second day of talks that kept relations on an even keel but have yielded limited deals so far.
The two leaders held at least 10 minutes of talks and walked together in Zhongnanhai, the secretive headquarters of the ruling Communist Party and residence of its top leaders.
“We’ve made some fantastic trade deals, great for both countries,” he said, as Xi accompanied him through the gardens of the compound.
The US president also said he discussed Iran with Chinese President Xi Jinping and that they do not want Iran to have nuclear weapons and “want the straits open”.
“We’ve settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to solve,” he added.
The meeting follows a day of warm welcome and highly choreographed pageantry in the Chinese capital. In talks lasting more than two hours on Thursday, the two presidents struck a positive tone on US-China relations but also discussed contentious issues ranging from trade, Taiwan and the Iran war.
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Zhongnanhai offers a prestigious setting for the meeting and represents a gesture of hospitality. Only a handful of US leaders have been inside the heavily guarded complex next to the Forbidden City. Richard Nixon, the first American president to visit China, met Chairman Mao Zedong there during his groundbreaking trip in 1972, while George W Bush visited the walled compound twice, in 2002 and 2008. Former President Barack Obama visited in 2014.
Beneath the friendliness on display, however, the relationship between the world’s two largest economies remains strained by a range of thorny topics.
In their first meeting the day before, Xi delivered his starkest warning yet on Taiwan to an American president, saying mishandling of the issue could lead to “clashes” between the superpowers.
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Trump told Fox News in an interview that Xi offered to help on Iran – something China has not explicitly confirmed. A White House readout of their meeting said the two sides agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must be open to support the free flow of energy.
China agreed to buy 200 Boeing planes, Trump said in the interview, which fell short of the 500 737 Max and additional widebody aircraft Chinese airlines were expected to buy at the upper extreme of a landmark deal.
The US and China are also discussing a mechanism for fast-tracking some Chinese investment deals, along with a reduction in tariffs on a swath of non-critical goods, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with CNBC Thursday in Beijing.
The two presidents are expected to continue their conversations over tea and a working lunch in the former imperial garden.
Possible business deals
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Bloomberg TV on Friday that it was undecided whether the truce will be extended after it expires later this year but added deals had been firmed up on Chinese purchases of farm goods, beef and Boeing aircraft.
Greer confirmed progress was also made on establishing mechanisms to manage future bilateral trade, with both sides expected to identify US$30 billion of non-sensitive goods. The Taiwan issue should not push that off the rails, he added.
Trump told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity that China had agreed to order 200 Boeing jets, its first purchase of US-made commercial jets in nearly a decade. That total was much lower than the 500 or more airplanes markets had expected and Boeing shares fell more than 4 per cent after the comments were aired.
Trump has also been expected to urge China to convince Iran to make a deal with Washington to end a war unpopular with American voters.
But he has travelled to Beijing with a weakened hand after US courts limited his ability to levy tariffs at will and as price rises driven by the Iran war have made him politically vulnerable at home.
A brief US summary of Thursday’s talks highlighted what the White House called the leaders’ shared desire to reopen the Strait of Hormuz waterway off Iran, through which a fifth of global supplies of oil and natural gas travel in normal times, and Xi’s apparent interest in buying American oil to reduce China’s dependence on Middle East supplies.
“The Chinese are being very pragmatic. They don’t want to be on the wrong side of this. They want to see peace,” Greer told Bloomberg. “So we have a lot of confidence that they will do what they can to limit any kind of material support for Iran.”
Stark warning
Xi’s remarks on Taiwan, the democratically governed island Beijing claims, represented a sharp, if not unprecedented, warning during a pomp-filled summit that otherwise appeared friendly and relaxed.
China’s foreign ministry said they came in a closed-door meeting that ran more than two hours.
Taiwan, which lies just 80 km off China’s coast, has long been a flashpoint in US-China ties, with Beijing refusing to rule out the use of military force to gain control of the island and the US bound by law to provide Taipei with the means to defend itself.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is with Trump in China, told NBC News that Taiwan was discussed, saying the Chinese “always raise it ... we always make clear our position and we move on to the other topics.”
“US policy on the issue of Taiwan is unchanged as of today,” Rubio added. Trump did not respond to a reporter’s shouted question whether the leaders had discussed Taiwan when he posed with Xi for photos at the Temple of Heaven Unesco World Heritage site.
At a lavish state banquet, Xi called the China-US relationship the most important in the world and added: “We must make it work and never mess it up.” BLOOMBERG, REUTERS
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