US President Donald Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on 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”.
