Anadolu: US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will “probably” meet with Xi Jinping in the “not too distant future” following a previously announced public invitation from the Chinese leader to visit Beijing.
“President Xi has invited me to China, and we’ll probably be doing that in the not too distant future, a little bit out, but not too distant,” Trump told reporters as he hosted Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. in the Oval Office. “I’ve been invited by a lot of people, and we’ll make those decisions pretty soon.”
The comments come just two days after multiple reports suggested that Trump and Xi could meet around the time of the Oct. 30-Nov. 1 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders summit in South Korea.
Officials are currently considering either a Trump-Xi sit-down on the meeting’s sidelines or a potential visit to China around the time of the global gathering, according to the South China Morning Post newspaper.
Trump said following a critical June 6 call with the Chinese president that “Xi graciously invited the First Lady and me to visit China, and I reciprocated.” Details on the potential meeting have remained scarce in the interim, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Malaysia this month.
The talks were largely framed as an effort to bridge ongoing divides between the world’s top two economies over trade, but any face-to-face between Xi and Trump would typically be followed by such high-level meetings as officials work to iron out the details of the sit-down and reach consensus on outstanding issues.
“The odds are high. I think both sides want to see it happen. Obviously we have to build the right atmosphere and the right deliverables so that a visit isn’t just a visit, but it actually has some takeaways from it that are concrete,” Rubio told reporters after the July 11 meeting.
“But there’s a strong desire on both sides to do it. The president wants to do it. The Chinese side wants to see it happen. President Xi has said that publicly. So I think the odds are high. I don’t have a date for you, but I think it’s coming. It’ll happen,” he added.
