This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
US President Donald Trump has said he expects to strike a deal when he meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea amid a monthslong trade war with Beijing.
“We’re going to be, I hope, making a deal. I think we’re going to have a deal. I think it will be a good deal for both,” Trump said on October 29, a day before he is set to sit down with Xi on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
A centerpiece of the October 30 in-person meeting — the first between the two leaders since 2019 — is how to ease the bruising trade war, with both sides putting out similar positive signals in the lead up to the high-stakes talks.
But while Trump and Xi look poised strike a truce in the trade war, experts who spoke to RFE/RL said that reaching a lasting trade deal is unlikely and they were less optimistic that the talks would result in dialing back US-China tensions over Taiwan — the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own territory — or in convincing China to limit its support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that preparatory talks ahead of the meeting have led to an agreement on a “framework” that includes a pause on China’s rare-earth restrictions, the final approvals on a deal to allow popular Chinese-owned video app TikTok to continue operating in the United States, and easing other trade frictions.
“Although the meeting might project an image of détente between China and the United States, the competition is far from over,” Claus Soong, an analyst at the Berlin-based think tank MERICS, told RFE/RL. “Structural issues persist, and neither side is willing to back off from its core interests.”
Can Trump Convince Xi To Put Pressure On Putin?
As Trump traveled to Asia for a broader tour that also included stops in Malaysia and Japan, he told reporters that he would like Beijing to help Washington in its efforts to broker peace talks about ending the more than three-year war in Ukraine.
The US president’s efforts to facilitate a deal have so far not succeeded and Trump said that he hoped Xi could use his leverage as a leading political and economic partner for Putin to help bring the Russian leader to the negotiating table.
In a sign of Trump’s frustration, Washington levied sanctions on major Russian oil companies earlier this month, which China’s Foreign Ministry said it “opposes” and had “no basis in international law.”
Aboard Air Force One on October 25, Trump said that China’s purchases of Russian oil may be discussed, but also added that Beijing is limiting deliveries “very substantially,” an apparent reference to major state-owned Chinese oil companies beginning to pause Russian imports.
Dennis Wilder, who was a top White House China adviser to former US President George W. Bush told RFE/RL that Beijing could be doing more to reduce oil imports from Russia, but that he is pessimistic that the talks in South Korea will result in fracturing Xi’s support for Putin.
“Trump has really not pressed Beijing on this issue because of his other priorities with Xi Jinping,” Wilder said. “China is not going to reduce its support to Russia’s war effort. Strategically, Xi has aligned with Putin and that will not change.”
A Cease-Fire In The Trade War?
Bessent said on October 26 that he expects China to resume purchases of US soybeans, which have hurt American farmers, and to delay new controls on rare-earth minerals, an essential group of 17 elements that find themselves in everything from electric vehicle batteries to smartphones to vital defense technology.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Washington has placed shelving a new 100 percent tariff set to take effect on November 1 on the table at the talks, as well as rolling back the 20 percent levy on China over its role in the fentanyl crisis in the United States by 10 percent.
In return, China would be expected to commit to more controls on the export of so-called precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl, which has been blamed for hundreds of thousands of drug-overdose deaths in recent years.
Beijing and Washington could also reduce port fees on each other’s ships.
Sari Arho Havren, an associate fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute, told RFE/RL that the proposed agreement leading up to the talks sounds like “a cease-fire agreement” in the ongoing trade war between the two countries.
Such a move would likely ease market-rattling tensions between the world’s two biggest economies and leave China with around a 45 percent US tariff rate, which is more in line with other leading US trading partners.
“Both Washington and Beijing want to buy time,” Arho Havren said. “In the big picture, trade represents only a small part of the larger confrontation between the United States and China.”
Will Trump And Xi Discuss Taiwan?
One of the longer term sticking points between Beijing and Washington is Taiwan, a self-governing democracy claimed by China.
Trump said Taiwan would be among the topics discussed with Xi.
Under longstanding policy, Washington follows a “one-China” policy that recognizes Beijing as the sole legal government of China and acknowledges its position that Taiwan is part of its territory, but it does not endorse that claim, which forms the basis of the so-called “three communiques” that helped establish formal diplomatic relations between Beijing and the United States.
The United States also provides weapons for the island’s self-defense under the Taiwan Relations Act.
During his campaign, Trump remained ambiguous about his commitment to the island and has hit Taipei with tariffs while calling for it to invest more into its own defense and relocate more production from its advanced semiconductor industry to the United States.
Ahead of the meeting, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio looked to head off any idea of concessions over Taiwan by rejecting the idea of abandoning Taiwan as part of a trade deal with China.
“If what people are worried about is we’re going to get some trade deal or we’re going to get favorable treatment on trade in exchange for walking away from Taiwan, no one is contemplating that,” he told reporters on a plane between Israel and Qatar.
Wilder, who used to brief President George W. Bush on China policy, says that he expects Xi to take advantage of the fact that Trump will be arriving at the bilateral meeting tired and will try to get him to deviate from the carefully nuanced US diplomatic line toward Taiwan and Beijing.
“I used to give President Bush a pocket card to pull out in the meetings so he would get the phrasing perfect,” Wilder said.
“If you say we abide by the ‘three communiques’ before you say we abide by the ‘Taiwan Relations Act’ you are leaning toward Beijing in the eyes of Taipei and Beijing.”
If A Deal Is Reached, What Happens Next?
Much will depend on what actually gets agreed to between Trump and Xi in South Korea.
While US officials have spoken about China delaying its latest rare-earth restrictions, it’s unclear for how long that will last and if this would also involve a pause on a different set of rare-earths restrictions that Beijing announced in April.
Trump has said that he plans to travel to Beijing early in 2026 to meet with Xi and added that this would be followed by a reciprocal visit to the United States later that same year.
Most experts say that any type of agreement reached in South Korea should be seen as a temporary cease-fire that could set the stage for more high-level dialogue between the two leaders, although major geopolitical tensions between the two countries will be harder to resolve.
“This is still a competition and it is still a zero sum competition, at least in the long term,” Soong said. “China is unlikely to concede anything that undermines its pursuit of great-power status or its efforts to gain greater leverage in international relations.”
