GYEONGJU, South Korea — President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will meet in Busan, South Korea, on Thursday morning, looking to cool an increasingly heated relationship.
The two sides are expected to discuss moves on tariffs, combating fentanyl and access to rare-earth minerals, while leaving bigger targets for later. The meeting is set to begin at 11 a.m. local time (10 p.m. Wednesday ET).
With a Nov. 10 deadline to reach a tariff deal approaching, what began as Trump’s crackdown on the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. has broadened into a longer list of trade and security issues.
The working expectation is that Trump and Xi will agree on a pause in the fight rather than finalizing a sweeping deal, a person familiar with the meeting planning said. Beijing could ease export curbs on strategically crucial rare earths, Washington could hold off on broad tariff hikes, and both sides could reach for gestures, such as expanded purchases of U.S. farm goods by China.
Xi is also weighing steps on fentanyl chemicals, likely focused on choking off money-laundering networks tied to gangs, this person said. A rollout of a larger agreement could be staged around Trump’s planned visit to China next year.
Trump has sounded upbeat about the prospect of reaching agreements. “I think we’re going to do well with China,” he said this week. “We meet, as you know, in South Korea with President Xi … and they want to make a deal. We want to make a deal.”
He added that he and Xi have agreed to meet again in China and in the United States, “in either Washington or at Mar-a-Lago.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told NBC News this week that meeting is likely to come before Xi’s trip to the U.S. for the G20 at Trump’s Doral property in Florida next fall. Trump is likely to visit Xi in Beijing early next year, just ahead of the Lunar New Year, Bessent said.
The president has said he expects to lower tariffs on China that he imposed over its role in the illicit international flow of fentanyl components. And he hopes to finalize a deal on TikTok that would allow the social media app to continue operating in the U.S. despite a law, passed before he took office, which had been poised to ban it.
On Wednesday, Trump was overheard telling leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that he expects the meeting with Xi to last three to four hours. Both Trump and his Chinese counterpart want the optics and tactical aspect of this meeting to go well, the person familiar with the meeting planning said.
Dan Caldwell, a former senior adviser to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said Trump deserves credit for pursuing a pragmatic China policy that maintains what he said was strategic ambiguity while taking steps to restore important military capabilities to deter Chinese aggression.
“A lot of folks wanted to assume that he was going to be reflexively hawkish on China,” Caldwell said of Trump. “That hasn’t been the case.”
But Caldwell cautioned against expecting a breakthrough in Busan. “I don’t think the overall push hinges on one meeting,” Caldwell said. “Ideally, these go well, but the whole thing does not hinge on just one set of talks.”
In other words, the goal is to make enough progress to get to the next date between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies.
Miles Yu, a former State Department adviser on China, said the U.S. and Beijing are “sizing each other out” with trade now a key battleground issue. Washington is pushing for concrete steps on fentanyl, market access and more, he said, while China “stonewalls and foot-drags” and offers only broad “frameworks.”
“This is the root cause of the five rounds of futile negotiations so far with China without a breakthrough,” Yu said, adding that the administration is trying to shift China’s approach by rallying its neighbors, a strategy that he said “may or may not work.”
After talks with Chinese counterparts in Malaysia last weekend, Bessent said negotiators had shaped a framework for the two leaders to consider that spanned tariffs, trade, fentanyl, rare earths and “substantial” purchases of U.S. agricultural products such as soybeans. He credited Trump’s threat of an additional 100% tariff with creating leverage and said he believes that the framework would avoid that outcome and open space for tackling other issues.
Trump’s meeting with Xi in Busan marks the end of a three-country Asia swing, during which he signed agreements with Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Japan and South Korea; made new foreign investment announcements; and proclaimed that tariff leverage can drive warring parties to stand down. Reflecting on his approach, Trump said going against the grain can sometimes deliver results.
“Oftentimes you’ll go the opposite way of almost everybody, and you’ll be the one that’s right, and the others will be the one that’s wrong,” he said, offering a peek into his thinking. “That’s where you have your greatest successes.”
Still, Trump is continuing a long-standing practice of meeting with allies before Beijing, which former Assistant Secretary of State Dave Stilwell said indicates that the U.S. is not going to trade its alliance commitments for a deal with China.
Some of the most sensitive terrain in the discussions involves critical minerals, said Stilwell, who also underscored the political guardrails around concerns for the Beijing-claimed island of Taiwan: “Acknowledge the words, but look at the actions,” he said, citing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent comments that the U.S. isn’t trading away Taiwan’s sovereignty for better deal terms.
Some of Trump’s aides are worried that the president could shift the U.S. position on independence for Taiwan, walking away from long-standing U.S. policy, and have advised him against it, NBC News reported this week.
Trump seemed to downplay any discussions, saying, “I don’t know that we’ll even speak about Taiwan.”
Xi “may want to ask about it,” Trump said. “There’s not that much to ask about. Taiwan is Taiwan.”
Analysts in the region, too, see limited room for a sweeping agreement this week. It’s unlikely that Trump and Xi will reach a comprehensive deal that settles the long-term structural differences between the U.S. and China, said Zeng Jinghan, a professor of international relations at the City University of Hong Kong. “But some sort of consensus and agreements are very possible,” said Zeng, given that both sides want “a little bit of de-escalation.”
The hope, Zeng added, is for “less aggressive” rhetoric, with both Beijing and Washington likely to come back and declare the meeting a success.
After the meeting, Trump plans to board Air Force One and return to the U.S. He has appeared to relish the receptions from foreign leaders on this quick trip across Asia. In Tokyo, he stood alongside Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, accepting a gift of cherry blossom trees and a putter that belonged to his late friend and former Japanese leader Shinzo Abe, and in Seoul received from South Korean President Lee Jae Myung a large gold crown, a replica from the Silla period.
In one snapshot, Trump and Lee were pictured in a gift shop at the Gyeongju National Museum, where items on display included a red “USA” hat, Trump-branded sneakers and a shirt bearing the president’s mugshot.
Trump praised the welcome he received in “vibrant” Malaysia, where Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim compared their experiences with their countries’ legal systems, saying, “I was in prison, but you almost got there.”
