White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that US President Donald Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea late next week.
The meeting between the two leaders has been scheduled as part of Trump’s long-planned trip to Asia next week, during which he is also expected to meet with the leaders of Malaysia and Japan.
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“On Thursday morning local time, President Trump will participate in a bilateral meeting with President Xi of the People’s Republic of China,” Leavitt told reporters, according to AFP.
Relations between the two countries have been fraught in recent weeks, with Trump threatening to cancel the summit – which was first announced after a phone call between the two leaders on Sept. 19 – over a move by China to curb exports on rare earth minerals. Trump also imposed an additional 100% tariff on China in response.
Posting on Truth Social on Oct. 10, Trump accused China of becoming “very hostile.”
“I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so,” he wrote.
On Oct. 14, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the Financial Times that the Chinese export controls were a sign that China’s economy is struggling and accused it of wanting “to pull everybody else down with them.”
Also on Thursday, Reuters reported that Chinese state oil companies PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC and Zhenhua Oil have suspended maritime imports of Russian oil in response to new US sanctions on Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil.
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Leavitt herself made headlines earlier this week when she told a reporter for the Huffington Post that “your mom” chose Budapest as the location for a since postponed meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.