Trump Hopes for ‘Deal on Everything’ in China Talks

[Da Lat]

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Trump Hopes for ‘Deal on Everything’ in China Talks


Trump also said he wanted to talk with the Chinese leader about how to end the war in Ukraine, ‘whether it’s through oil or energy or anything else.’







Melanie Sun
10/23/2025|Updated: 10/23/2025

President Donald Trump expressed optimism on Oct. 22 about securing deals with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on issues ranging from soybeans to rare earths to limits on nuclear weapons during scheduled talks next week in South Korea.

“I think we‘ll make a deal,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office for a visit from NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. “We’ll make a deal on, I think, everything.

“We'll have a pretty long meeting scheduled. We can work out a lot of our questions and our doubts and our tremendous assets together. So we look forward to that.”

Trump said he believes that Xi now wants to end the war in Ukraine and would be receptive to such a discussion.

“Because of [former U.S. President Joe] Biden and [former U.S. President Barack] Obama, they got forced together,” Trump said of China and Russia. “They should never have been forced together but by nature, they can’t be friendly. I hope they are friendly, frankly, but they can’t be.

“Biden did that and Obama did that. They forced them together because of energy, because of oil.”


Trump said oil was one of the issues he planned to discuss with Xi.

“I think I‘ll probably be talking about it,“ he said. ”What I’ll really be talking to him about is how do we end the war with Russia and Ukraine, whether it’s through oil or energy or anything else. And I think he’s going to be very receptive.”

The U.S. president also said he expected to discuss with Beijing many other issues, from China resuming U.S. soybean purchases to including China in talks with Russia to limit nuclear weapons.

He noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had raised the prospect of a bilateral de-escalation of nuclear weapons, and that China could be added to that effort.

On rare earths, Trump said he was not too concerned about China’s recent announcement of export controls on nearly all rare earths, calling it “a disturbance” to which he responded with additional tariffs of 100 percent.

Those are not due to take effect until Nov. 1 if an agreement cannot be reached.

Trump has sent conflicting messages about the Xi meeting in recent days, telling reporters on Oct. 21 that it might not happen. This comes amid reports of a power struggle between Xi and other factions within the Chinese Communist Party leadership structure and the Chinese military.


Asia Tour

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer traveled ahead of Trump on Oct. 22. They will stop first in Malaysia to meet with Chinese officials over tensions regarding the rare-earth export bans. Earlier in October, Trump also responded with threats to bar “critical software“ exports to China.

“This is China versus the globe,” Bessent told Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow” program. “It’s not just on the U.S.”

Of China’s rare-earth threats, he said, “This licensing regime that they’ve proposed is unworkable and unacceptable.”

He said the United States and its Western allies were contemplating how to respond if they were unable to negotiate a pause in Beijing’s plans or some other relief, but gave no details.

“I’m hoping that we can get this ironed out this weekend so that the leaders can enter their talks on a more positive note,” he said.

Trump is scheduled to travel to Kuala Lumpur for a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that begins on Oct. 26, before making a stop in Japan to meet with its new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.

He will then travel to South Korea ahead of a leaders’ summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that is being held from Oct. 31 to Nov. 1 in Gyeongju, South Korea.

Greer and Bessent have both stressed that they do not want to decouple from China or escalate the situation, but they insist that the United States needs to rebalance trade with China after decades of very limited access to Chinese markets.

Greer told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that China still has unfulfilled obligations to buy U.S. agricultural and manufactured goods under a trade deal signed during Trump’s first term as president.

“The U.S. has always been quite open to the Chinese, and it’s really been driven by Chinese policies that exclude U.S. companies and drive overcapacity and overproduction in China,” he said. “None of that works for the United States. We can’t live that way anymore, so we need an alternative path.”


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From The Epoch Times
Link: https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/...ner&src_cmp=gp






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