Trade, TikTok and war… What will Trump and Xi Jinping discuss at tomorrow’s big meet?

Talk of being optimistic! US President Donald Trump is brimming with positivity ahead of his high-stakes meeting, scheduled for October 30, with China’s Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in South Korea.

“I think we’re going to have a great meeting with President Xi of China, and a lot of problems are going to be solved,” said Trump en route to South Korea, adding, “We have been talking to them, we’re not just walking into the meeting cold… I think we’re going to have a very good outcome for our country and for the world actually.”

The face-to-face meeting between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies come after six long years — they last met in 2019 — and much is riding on it. The November 10 deadline for a trade truce is looming, lest tariffs surge again.

And while Trump is optimistic of reshaping US-China ties, experts do not expect the two countries to resolve all their differences, but hope for enough progress to stop the rivalry from doing more economic damage.

What will Xi and Trump discuss?

Trade and tariffs

Since returning to power earlier this year, Trump has engaged in a tariff and trade war with China. Beijing has pushed back against the American president; it stopped agricultural imports that could hurt Trump’s Republican voter base and diversified exports to different markets across Asia and Africa. In a tit-for-tat move, China also hit US-owned vessels docking in the country with new port fees.

Beijing has also threatened American companies such as Google and Nvidia with antitrust investigations.

The talks in South Korea between Xi and Trump aim to chart a new path and for this, top economic officials from the US and China met in Kuala Lumpur to prepare for the meeting and hold preliminary talks on the key issues in the escalating trade war. Following it, China’s top trade negotiator Li Chenggang said that China and the US had reached a preliminary consensus on a range of issues.

And on Wednesday, a day before his scheduled meet, Trump told reporters that he was hopeful that his meeting with Xi would yield progress on the issue. “I think we have a really good chance of making a very comprehensive deal,” Trump said.

Trump also said he wants China to buy US soya beans. “I want our farmers to be taken care of. And he [Xi] wants things also.”

The American president also said he would also discuss
fentanyl with Xi, as he raises pressure on Beijing to curb trafficking of the powerful opioid and cracks down on Latin American drug cartels.

Rare earths

Not everyone knew what were
rare earths before 2025. However, it’s become a buzz word as the US and China battle over it. And on Thursday, Trump will look to get Xi to lift the curbs on rare earth exports.

Earlier, when China, who produces almost 70 per cent and processes nearly 90 per cent of the world’s rare earth elements, had
imposed restrictions on them, it had infuriated Trump. Since then, the US president has been looking at alternatives, making rare earth deals with other countries, including Australia, and Thailand.

Many experts believe China is leveraging its rare earth restrictions in part to pressure the US to negotiate over the 20 per cent fentanyl-linked tariffs on Chinese exports.

It’s left to be seen if Trump, who calls himself a ‘master negotiator’ can get Xi to agree on the topic.

Russia-Ukraine war

At the meeting tomorrow (October 30), Trump is likely to push Xi to bring Russia to the negotiating table to end its three-year-long war with Ukraine.

‘Peacemaker’ Trump, who had vowed to end this war in the days after coming to power, has struggled to get Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, but a ceasefire deal has so far eluded the American president.

To achieve this goal, Trump even levied
sanctions on Russia’s two major oil firms last week, which many said was an indicator of the US president’s frustration with Moscow. But China has opposed the recent sanctions, saying they had “no basis in international law”.

In fact, China has been the number one overall consumer of Russian energy, having purchased some $219.5 billion worth of Russian oil, gas and coal. The US president last week claimed the Chinese president “can have a big influence on Putin”.

Taiwan

When asked if
Taiwan would be on the agenda of his talks with Xi, Trump said, “I don’t know if we’ll even speak about Taiwan. He may want to ask about it. There is not that much to ask about it.” But geopolitical experts note that Xi will not waste this opportunity to discuss the self-ruled island that Beijing sees as its own.

At present, Washington recognises only China. However, it provides self-defence weapons to Taiwan. Earlier, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declined the idea of abandoning Taiwan in order to seal a trade deal with China.

But despite Rubio’s comments, there’s concern in Taipei over Trump’s support to the island. Since coming to power this year, Trump has vacillated on his position towards Taiwan. And analysts believe that Xi will use this to his benefit.

Xi will probably try to convince Trump to state that the US doesn’t support independence for Taiwan, noted a New York Times report. While this is a stance that Washington has held, stating it in these clear terms, would be welcomed by Beijing.

TikTok, Jimmy Lai and more…

Apart from these key issues, Trump and Xi are expected to also discuss other issues such as the ownership of TikTok in the US. On Monday, the US president said that a deal on TikTok’s US ownership with China “might” be finalised during his meeting with Xi. “We might. That’ll be one of the things we’re discussing,” Trump told reporters.

Even US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the deal on TikTok was reached in talks with China, and it will be “for the two leaders to consummate that transaction on Thursday in (South) Korea.”

Moreover, Trump said he might press Xi to release jailed Hong Kong media tycoon
Jimmy Lai, a British citizen and founder of now-defunct newspaper Apple Daily – known for its criticism of Beijing’s suppression of Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests, who has been detained since 2020.

Trump or Xi, who has the upper hand in the talks?

Both leaders — Trump and Xi — are aiming to get the most out of this meeting tomorrow. But some believe that the Chinese president is already a leg up on his American counterpart.

That’s because China has shown not only Trump but the world that it is on equal standing with the US on a global stage.

For instance, when Trump announced a tariff war against most of America’s trading partners, most countries rushed to negotiate a better deal. However, Beijing fought back with its own measures – until both sides were forced to the table for a truce.

As CNN notes in one report, that Xi has cemented a new reality in US-China relations: China will negotiate, but it won’t be cowed.

Additionally, Xi has more reasons to be confident. Trump’s trade wars have unsettled traditional US allies with a few governments in European countries and Canada now pondering how to better insulate themselves from Trump’s overreach, which may invariably mean finding new accommodations with China.

Rush Doshi, a former Biden administration official and author of The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order, told the Washington Post: “Xi is not playing the cards he has — he’s playing the player he’s up against. He thinks that President Trump will fold, and his bet may have been proven right.”

What does the world expect from Trump-Xi talks?

While US and China hope to reach a deal to lower the temperature of their fierce rivalry, others are tempering their expectations. As Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore, said to Al Jazeera, “I have modest expectations for this meeting. I think, no matter what happens this week, we haven’t seen the end of economic tensions, tariff threats, export controls and restrictions, and the use of unusual levers like digital rules.”

Others also noted that it’s unlikely that the Trump-Xi meet will be able to de-escalate the rivalry between the two countries. “A fundamental de-escalation is unlikely given the political environment in the US,” said Shan Guo, a partner with Shanghai-based Hutong Research.

Most note that the problem between China and the US is the language the two use for one another. While Trump often complains about the US being “ripped off” by China, Xi has repeatedly called for their relations to be defined by “mutual respect” and “win-win cooperation”.

And in such case, it seems unlikely that one meeting will change the overall tone.

With inputs from agencies