President Donald Trump is expressing high hopes for his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, despite a fresh round of trade friction that has erupted between their two countries.
“That’s a big meeting, and I think it’s going to work out very well, actually,” Trump said from Japan. The meeting is set for Thursday at the APEC summit in South Korea.
The friction is significant. The US has threatened new 100% tariffs on Chinese goods after Beijing imposed tight export controls on rare earth minerals.
This tit-for-tat escalation, combined with new US port fees and Chinese countermeasures, has broken a recent calm in the trade war.
Trump, however, focused on the positive potential. He described the upcoming meeting as “fantastic” and predicted it would be “great for everybody,” signaling a desire for de-escalation.