Trump Hopes For ‘Deal On Everything’ In China Talks

Authored by Melanie Sun via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump expressed optimism on Wednesday about securing deals with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on issues ranging from soybeans to rare earths and limiting nuclear weapons during scheduled talks next week in South Korea.

“I think we‘ll make a deal,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office for a visit by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

“We’ll make a deal on, I think, everything.”

“We’ll have a pretty long meeting scheduled,” Trump said.

“We can work out a lot of our questions and our doubts and our tremendous assets together. So we look forward to that.”

Trump said he believes Xi now wants to end the war in Ukraine, and that the Chinese leader would be receptive to such a discussion.

“Because of Biden and Obama, they got forced together,” Trump said of China and Russia.

“They should never have been forced together but by nature, they can’t be friendly. I hope they are friendly frankly but they can’t be.

“Biden did that and Obama did that. They forced them together because of energy, because of oil,” Trump said, noting that was one of the issues he planned to discuss with Xi.

“I think I‘ll probably be talking about it. What I’ll really be talking to him about is how do we end the war with Russia and Ukraine, whether it’s through oil or energy or anything else. And I think he’s going to be very receptive.”

The U.S. president also said he expected to discuss with Beijing many other issues, from China resuming U.S. soybean purchases to including China on talks with Russia to limit nuclear weapons.

He noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had raised the prospect of a bilateral de-escalation of nuclear weapons, and China could be added to that effort.

On rare earths, Trump said he wasn’t too concerned about China’s recent announcement of export controls on nearly all rare earth, calling it “a disturbance” to which he responded with additional tariffs of 100 percent.

Those are not due to take effect until Nov. 1 if an agreement can’t be reached.

Trump has sent conflicting messages about the Xi meeting in recent days, telling reporters on Tuesday that it might not happen. This comes amid reports of a power struggle between Xi and other factions within the Chinese Communist Party leadership structure and the Chinese military.

Asia Tour

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer traveled ahead of Trump on Wednesday, with their first stop in Malaysia to meet with Chinese officials over tensions regarding the rare earth export bans. Earlier in the month, Trump also responded with threats to bar “critical software“ exports to China.

“This is China versus the globe. It’s not just on the U.S.,” Bessent told Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow” program. “This licensing regime that they’ve proposed is unworkable and unacceptable,” he said of China’s rare earth threats.

He said the United States and its Western allies were contemplating how to respond if they were unable to negotiate a pause in Beijing’s plans or some other relief, but gave no details.

“I’m hoping that we can get this ironed out this weekend so that the leaders can enter their talks on a more positive note,” he said.

Trump is scheduled to travel to Kuala Lumpur for a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that begins on Sunday, before making a stop in Japan to meet with their new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.

He will then travel to South Korea ahead of a leaders’ summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum that is being held Oct. 31-Nov. 1 in Gyeongju.

Greer and Bessent have both stressed they do not want to decouple from China or escalate the situation, but insist the United States needs to rebalance trade with China after decades of very limited access to Chinese markets.

Greer told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that China still has unfulfilled obligations to buy U.S. agricultural and manufactured goods under a trade deal signed during Trump’s first term as president.

“The U.S. has always been quite open to the Chinese, and it’s really been driven by Chinese policies that exclude U.S. companies and drive overcapacity and overproduction in China. None of that works for the United States,” he said. “We can’t live that way anymore, so we need an alternative path.”