President Donald Trump speaks at an Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation CEO luncheon in Gyoeongju, South Korea, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
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Mark Schiefelbein/AP
GYEONGJU, SOUTH KOREA – President Trump on Wednesday confidently predicted hanging a cope with China’s chief in a bilateral assembly on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Financial Discussion board, following a interval of commerce tensions which have threatened to escalate.
“I believe we’re going have a deal, I believe it is going to be an excellent deal for each, and that is actually an amazing consequence,” Trump advised a lunch assembly of APEC enterprise executives within the southern metropolis of Gyeongju.
“That is higher than preventing and going by way of all kinds of issues,” he added forward of the Thursday assembly with President Xi Jinping. “No cause for it.”
Trump stated that he might scale back tariffs on Chinese language items in alternate for a dedication from Beijing to curb exports of chemical compounds used to make fentanyl.
“I anticipate to be decreasing that as a result of I imagine that they are going to assist us with the fentanyl state of affairs,” Trump advised reporters en path to Gyeongju. “They’ll be doing what they will do.”
The U.S. presently imposes a 20% tariff on Chinese language imports, along with different tariffs, as a result of the U.S. authorities believes China has not accomplished sufficient to limit fentanyl precursor exports.
In response, Beijing imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. soybeans. U.S. and Chinese language financial officers met over the weekend in Malaysia to construct the framework of a commerce deal that would come with China resuming purchases of U.S. soybeans.
The deal would additionally embody China delaying the imposition of export restrictions on uncommon earths, whereas the U.S. would maintain off on elevating tariffs by 100%.
Each Beijing and Washington are buying and selling accusations that the opposite aspect’s financial coercion is wreaking havoc on the worldwide economic system.
“That is China versus the world,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated about China’s uncommon earth export controls this month. “They’ve pointed a bazooka on the provide chains and the economic base of the whole free world, and we’re not going to have it,” he stated.
“The U.S. has raised tariffs so excessive that it is introduced globalization to the verge of breakdown,” says Zhu Feng, dean of the Faculty of Worldwide Research at Nanjing College in China.
He notes that moreover tariffs, the U.S. has raised port charges this month on Chinese language-owned or operated ships docking at U.S. ports. It has instructed controls on U.S. exports of software program to China.
And it has proposed barring Chinese language air carriers headed to and from the U.S. from flying by way of Russian airspace. China’s airways have a price benefit, as a result of Russia permits Chinese language carriers to transit their airspace, however not U.S. ones.
“You may make China settle for your rise in tariffs. However you’ll be able to’t preserve overwhelmingly pounding on China so laborious,” he says. “China’s retaliation is to point out China and the world that the U.S. cannot simply preserve us cornered,” Zhu provides.
Trump has additionally talked about that he desires to debate nuclear arms management with Xi, and probably embody China in U.S.-Russia nuclear arms management negotiations.
Regardless of hypothesis that Trump would possibly attempt to revive nuclear negotiations with North Korean chief Kim Jong Un on this journey, that now appears off the desk.
Trump advised South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the beginning of bilateral talks that talks with Xi have been his essential aim. “We’re trying ahead to seeing him [Xi], and that was our focus, actually, for this go to.”
Trump advised Lee he was conscious that the 2 Koreas stay technically in a state of struggle, and warranted Lee that “we are going to see what we are able to do to get that straightened out. You recognize that I will be engaged on this very laborious.”
As Trump was visiting South Korea, Pyongyang stated it had performed profitable cruise missile assessments.
