United States President Donald Trump met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in a highly anticipated meeting in South Korea on Thursday morning (local time) alongside the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
Trump.. “We have a great relationship. We’ve always had a great relationship.”
< Xi just stands there, not agreeing whatsoever > 🤦♂️pic.twitter.com/8v1WcXIuux
— Mike_not_in_Vegas_ (@Mike_in_Vegas_) October 30, 2025
Trump Calls Xi Jinping His ‘Friend for a Long Time’
Both the leaders greeted each other with sweet gestures by shaking hands, exchanged smiles, and posed for the cameras. “We’re going to have a very successful meeting, I have no doubt,” Donald Trump uttered. But he is a very hard negotiator; that’s not good,” Trump said.
.@POTUS meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time since 2019: “It’s a great honor… I think we’re going to have a fantastic relationship for a long period of time — and it’s an honor to have you with us.” pic.twitter.com/ueW2gvMcCy
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 30, 2025
Both leaders are meeting for the first time since Trump’s second term in the White House. They last met in 2019 in Japan on the sidelines of the G20 during Trump’s first term as the US president.
Later, when the two leaders, along with their staff, initiated the meeting on Thursday, Trump referred to Xi Jinping as his “friend” “for a long time now.”
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Top Officials Join Leaders for the High-Level Discussion
“The very, very distinguished and respected president of China, and we will be having some discussions. I think we have already agreed to a lot of things, and we will agree to some more right now.”
But President Xi is a wonderful leader of a wonderful nation, and I believe we’re going to have a tremendous relationship for a long, long time and it’s an honor to have you with us,” the US president added.
While Trump was joined by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US State Secretary Marco Rubio at the table, Xi Jinping was joined by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and other dignitaries.
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Will Trump Really Reduce Tariffs on China?
The long-awaited high-stakes encounter between the world’s two largest economies’ leaders comes at a critical juncture as both countries are looking to defrost trade relations, especially in the context of the recent trade war.
As he boarded Air Force One on his way to South Korea on Wednesday, Trump had suggested that he might reduce tariffs on China because he thinks “they’re going to help us with the fentanyl situation.”
Regarding Nvidia, he explained that “we’ll be talking about Blackwells,” referring to the AI processor chip as “super duper.”
