Trump-Xi meeting approaches with high stakes and expectations, but few details

A high-stakes meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could bring about a breakthrough in the fraught trade relationship between the two economic powers.

But while both the Trump administration and Beijing have expressed optimism ahead of the sit-in, details of the summit remain murky and some experts are questioning the White House’s confidence.

Phil Luck, director of the economics program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he expected an outcome that would be “relatively minor, relatively ambiguous” and “not awe-inspiring.”

“I think, broadly speaking, both we and the Chinese side have started a lot of small fires over the last few months, and we’re basically going to put out some of them,” he told CNBC.

The talks, the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders since President Trump took back the White House and launched a trade war with China, are scheduled to begin late Wednesday Eastern time and early Thursday morning local time in Busan, South Korea.

The one-on-one meeting will be Trump’s last item on the agenda before he returns to Washington, D.C., to conclude a five-day trip to three Asian countries.

“I am very much looking forward to meeting with President Xi of China,” President Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social less than four hours before the bilateral talks began.

On his way to South Korea, President Trump said he hoped his administration would reduce certain tariffs on Chinese imports related to suspected fentanyl trafficking to the United States.

President Trump told reporters on Air Force One: “I’m hoping for a reduction because I believe we’re going to solve the fentanyl problem.” “They’re going to do what they can.”

However, when asked what China is doing to justify lifting tariffs on fentanyl, President Trump did not provide details.

“Well, I think they’re in an industry that has something to do with drugs. Fentanyl exists for other reasons and we have to eliminate it. We have to stop it,” he said.

And when pressed by reporters for clarification on whether and if China intends to assist U.S. law enforcement with fentanyl, President Trump offered little response.

“China will work with me,” he said, “and we’re going to do something. I believe, I mean, look, we’ve got to have a meeting, there’s a meeting tomorrow. It’s a big meeting, and fentanyl is going to be one of the things we’re talking about.”

He added: “Importantly, we will be talking about farmers and we will be talking about many things.”

President Trump did not elaborate on how farmers would be included in the discussion.

China, the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, has halted all purchases of the staple crop for months amid a tit-for-tat tariff battle that has cost U.S. farmers billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Ahead of President Trump’s meeting with Mr. Xi, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested the soybean drought would soon be over.

“Once the announcement of the deal with China becomes public, our soybean farmers will be very happy about what’s going to happen this season and over the next few years,” Bessent said Sunday.

This week, Chinese-owned COFCO purchased three cargoes of U.S. soybeans for shipment in December and January. This corresponds to approximately 180,000 tons of product. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins praised the deal as a major step forward and the result of “strong consensus-building” by President Trump.

But CSIS’ Luck told CNBC that “that’s peanuts” compared to what China typically buys in a week during the peak fall harvest season.

Asked for additional information about what Trump plans to discuss with Xi, the White House referred CNBC to the president’s comments about Air Force One.

In his remarks, President Trump also suggested that he was unlikely to raise the Taiwan issue with President Xi, saying “I don’t even know if we’re going to talk about it” regarding the self-governing island.

Trump said: “I don’t know. I mean, maybe he wants to hear about it. There’s not much to ask.”

The meeting comes just as the recently heated trade relationship between the United States and China appears to be calming down.

In mid-October, President Trump threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods by 100% starting November 1, after the Chinese government announced new export restrictions on rare earth minerals. Days later, President Trump threatened to force the United States to halt purchases of Chinese cooking oil in retaliation for China’s freeze on soybean purchases.

But after a meeting between the two countries’ top trade negotiators, Bessent said on Sunday that the United States and China had violated the “framework” of the trade agreement that would prevent the United States from taking effect on 100% tariffs.

“We’re also hopeful that we might be able to get some sort of postponement of the rare earth export restrictions that the Chinese side has been discussing,” Bessent said.

Luck said he thought one of the “easiest things” Xi and Trump could announce after their meeting would be some tariff reductions. “We threatened to impose very high tariffs, but it was immediately clear that we did not want to impose tariffs,” he said.

Luck also said he expected the meeting to generate at least some discussion about “reversing some of the export controls that we have put in place and the export controls that the United States has put in place.”

The one-on-one meeting between Trump and Xi comes after friendship talks with the leaders of Japan, South Korea and other countries.

President Trump, who began his Asian tour in Kuala Lumpur, signed a so-called reciprocal trade agreement with Malaysia, and the United States announced a “framework” for trade negotiations with Thailand and Vietnam.

In Japan, President Trump met with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and signed an agreement on rare earths and nuclear power.

President Trump also claimed that Japanese auto giant Toyota had committed to spending $10 billion to build a U.S. factory, but Toyota executives reportedly said that no specific new investment had been announced.