(LONDON) — President Donald Trump touted an “amazing” meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, saying the two leaders reached agreements to reduce tariffs on Chinese imports, delay Chinese restrictions on its rare earth mineral exports and secure Chinese purchases of American soybeans and other farm products.
Still, key topics — including Chinese designs on Taiwan and a potential deal to keep TikTok operating in the U.S. — were not addressed, according to the post-meeting remarks from Trump and official Chinese readouts.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One following the meeting with Xi, which lasted about 1 hour and 45 minutes, Trump said the 20% tariffs on China related to fentanyl were being reduced to 10%, bringing the total amount of duties imposed on Chinese imports from 57% to 47%.
Trump said he agreed to reduce the tariff rate because China had agreed to “work very hard to stop the flow” of fentanyl.
Trump said the U.S. had reached a one-year agreement with China ensuring Beijing would not impose dramatic restrictions on rare earth minerals — materials key for producing computer chips that are needed for everything including smartphones, AI systems and defense technology.
China’s Ministry of Commerce confirmed the temporary suspension of those restrictions in an official readout. Trump said he believes the one-year deal will be “routinely” extended.
Meanwhile, Trump also said Xi had “authorized China to begin the purchase of massive amounts of Soybeans, Sorghum, and other Farm products.”
“We have a deal now,” Trump told reporters. “Every year we’ll renegotiate the deal, but I think the deal will go on for a long time, long beyond the year. We’ll negotiate at the end of the year. But all of the rare earth has been settled, and that’s for the world.”
The president said the meeting touched on most key bilateral issues. “A lot of decisions were made,” Trump said. “There wasn’t too, too much left out there.”
Overall, Trump said the meeting with Xi in South Korea was “amazing,” and on a scale of 1 to 10 gave it a 12. “He’s a great leader, great leader of a very powerful, very strong country, China, and we, what can I say? We have — it was an outstanding group of decisions, I think that was made,” Trump said.
The two leaders agreed that Trump will visit China in April, the president said, with Xi then visiting the U.S. “sometime after that.”
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce released a statement following the meeting saying that Beijing “looks forward to working with the United States to do a good job in implementation and inject more certainty and stability into Sino-U.S. economic and trade cooperation and the world economy.”
Leaders talk soybeans, but not Taiwan
Trump said China would begin purchasing U.S. soybeans “immediately” as part of the new deal. The Chinese pause on purchasing Americans soybeans had been a major part of the ongoing trade war and had deeply affected American farmers.
“We’re in agreement on so many elements, large amounts, tremendous amounts of the soybeans and other farm products are going to be purchased immediately, starting immediately,” Trump told reporters after the meeting.
In a later social media post, Trump said Xi “authorized China to begin the purchase of massive amounts of Soybeans, Sorghum, and other Farm products.”
Trump also said that he discussed computer chips with Xi, claiming China said they would speak with U.S. chipmaker Nvidia and some others about purchasing products from America.
Trump said the two men did not discuss Nvidia’s high-end Blackwell artificial intelligence chip during the talks.
In his post to social media after the meeting, Trump said China also agreed to “begin the process of purchasing American Energy. In fact, a very large scale transaction may take place concerning the purchase of Oil and Gas from the Great State of Alaska.”
Trump did not address a potential deal to keep TikTok running in the U.S. China’s Commerce Ministry said it is committed to “properly resolving issues related to TikTok.” The statement did not say a deal had been finalized.
The thorny issue of Taiwan did not come up, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Russia’s war in Ukraine was discussed at length, the president added, with Trump saying he and Xi agreed to work together to get the war “finished.”
“Ukraine came up very strongly,” Trump said. “We talked about it for a long time, and we’re both going to work together to see if we can get something done.”
“We agree the sides are, you know, locked in fighting, and sometimes you have to let him fight, I guess, crazy, but he’s going to help us, and we’re going to work together on Ukraine. Not a lot more we can do,” Trump said.
Trump said that he didn’t broach China’s continued purchases of oil from Russia.
“He’s been buying oil from Russia for a long time. It takes care of a big part of China,” Trump said. “But we didn’t really discuss the oil. We discussed working together to see if we could get that war finished. You know, it doesn’t affect China. It doesn’t affect us.”
The president said his pre-meeting announcement on the planned resumption of U.S. nuclear testing was not aimed at China. Rather, he said, it “had to do with others.”
“They seem to all be nuclear testing,” he said. “We have more nuclear weapons than anybody. We don’t do testing. We’ve halted it years, many years ago. But with others doing testing, I think it’s appropriate that we’d … also testing.”
When pressed, Trump would not say who the “others” were. The U.S. and Russia, he added, have the most nuclear warheads, with China able to “catch up within four or five years.”
“I’d like to see a denuclearization,” Trump said. “I think de-escalation would be — they would call denuclearization — would be a tremendous thing, and it’s something we are actually talking to Russia about that and China would be added to that, if we do something.”
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