Reid Standish
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.”
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