By Catherine Yang
Contributing Writer
U.S. President Donald Trump was in Gyeongju, South Korea, on Wednesday, hours away from capping off his busy Asia tour with a high-stakes meeting with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping on Thursday.
The two leaders were to sit down at 11 a.m. local time for a meeting that could last up to two hours before Trump departs for Washington.
Trump met with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Wednesday to discuss investments and security, but no trade deal was signed.
Xi will remain in South Korea on Saturday and hold a bilateral meeting with the South Korean president.
American and Chinese trade negotiators said on Sunday they had reached a framework for an agreement between the two countries and that a deal is expected to come out of the Trump-Xi meeting.
A myriad of issues are on the table as the two leaders meet to discuss tariffs, fentanyl, global supply chains, Indo-Pacific security and political prisoners.
Chinese spokespersons called the high-level relationship between Trump and Xi “irreplaceable” in strategic relations between the two countries and said it would be an “in-depth” exchange.
Trump has said the list of issues he wants to raise with Xi is long, and he expects cooperation and concessions from Beijing on several of them.
Trump and U.S. officials have also signaled that 100% tariffs are no longer on the table, given that Beijing is expected to hold off on a disruptive export restriction program for rare earths.
The United States and China had imposed tariffs reaching triple digits on each other back in April amid escalating tensions, but those tariffs have been paused several times to make room for negotiations. The next deadline is Nov. 9, which may be pushed again if no final deal is reached in the Thursday meeting.
Beijing is expected to hold off on its latest rare-earth export controls for about a year as it reviews the rule, while Trump is accelerating the diversification of the supply chain. The U.S. president signed agreements with Thailand, Japan and Malaysia in the past few days.
Also high on the list is American farmers, whom Trump said Beijing had been trying to use as “leverage.”
China is the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, purchasing more than every other buyer combined. This year, amid a record harvest, China boycotted U.S. soybeans and purchased its fill from Brazil and Argentina instead, leaving American soybean farmers in the lurch.
Farmers’ associations appealed to Trump, Chinese officials urged U.S. farmers to lobby to reduce tariffs, and Trump said he would use tariff revenue to bail out the farmers in the short term.
Trump has previously said he wants China to “quadruple” its purchases of U.S. soybeans.
While many nations have signed trade deals that allow them to effectively “buy down” their trade deficits with the United States through multibillion-dollar investments rather than purchases of U.S. goods, national security concerns are likely to prevent Beijing from doing the same. Trump has said he expects a “deal on everything” rather than a traditional trade deal.
Beijing is also expected to curb exports of fentanyl precursor chemicals and do its part in cracking down on drug trafficking that is causing a crisis in the United States, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday. Trump has said he expects to announce a reduction of the 20% fentanyl-related tariff imposed by Washington on China if Beijing agrees to cooperate on this issue.
Moreover, Trump has said he will bring up the Russia-Ukraine war, Taiwan, and that he will ask for the release of political prisoner Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul who has been imprisoned since 2020.
Reuters contributed to this report.
