Trump ends Asia trip with Xi meeting, nuke threat

What happened

President Donald Trump is returning to Washington, D.C., on Thursday after six days in Asia. Before boarding Air Force One in South Korea, he met for an hour and 40 minutes with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump called the meeting “amazing” and a “12” on a scale of one to 10, and said he was cutting tariffs on Chinese goods to an average of 47% from 57%. Shortly before sitting down with Xi, Trump posted on social media that he had “instructed” the Pentagon to “start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis” with China and Russia, a process that “will begin immediately.”

Who said what

The first meeting between Xi and Trump in six years appears to have “lowered the temperature in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies,” The Washington Post said. Trump said China had agreed to “work very hard to stop the flow” of fentanyl into the U.S., begin buying “tremendous amounts” of U.S. soybeans and suspend its limits on exports of rare earths minerals for a year. He and Xi would probably sign a trade deal “pretty soon,” Trump told reporters.

Beijing’s “readout of the meeting did not mention any new trade agreements,” The New York Times said, but it noted that Xi had told Trump they should avoid the “vicious cycle of mutual retaliation.” Despite Trump’s “outward confidence that the grounds for a deal are in place,” The Associated Press said, U.S.-China negotiations over the past year have “demonstrated that tentative steps forward can be short-lived.”

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Trump told reporters on Air Force One his nuclear testing decision was not directed at China but “had to do with others,” adding, “They seem to all be nuclear testing.” Russia last week said it had tested a new nuclear-powered cruise missile and underwater drone capable of carrying warheads, but like the U.S. and China, it has not conducted a nuclear weapons test since the 1990s. The last known nuclear test was by North Korea in 2017.

What next?

Trump said he “will be going to China in April” and that Xi would visit the U.S. “some time after that.” Trump is scheduled to arrive back in Washington this afternoon, while Xi remains in South Korea to meet with other regional leaders at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.