Trump 'OK' with suspending nuclear program if done with a 'real commitment'
On Iran, Trump claimed that he would be open to them suspending their nuclear program for 20 years, but that it had to be done with a “real commitment”.
Speaking to journalists aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington, Trump also denied reports that Iran still had a high capacity to use missiles, claiming that their missile stockpile was 80% gone as a result of the US military campaign which began in late February. Trump claimed that those reports were fake, and singled out a journalist from the New York Times whose work he described as “treasonous”.
Additionally, Trump said, having discussed it with Xi, he would consider lifting sanctions on Chinese companies that bought Iranian oil, and that he would make a decision on the matter soon.
Around the same time Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, said that US had been in contact with Iran to say that they were seeking to continue talks, and that his country were prepared to pursue either a diplomatic or militaristic route in order to end the conflict.
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More topics discussed during the US-China summit have been revealed by the US president, with Trump claiming that he and Xi also spoke about North Korea, fentanyl and the possible release of 30 pastors from the Beijing Zion Church who were arrested in 2025.
Trump also doubled down on his assertion that China had agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets, with the potential for that number to rise to 750, and stated that they would also be buying “billion of dollars” of soybeans.
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Trump says that he and Xi spoke 'a lot' about Taiwan
Donald Trump has said that he and Chinese president Xi Jinping spoke about Taiwan, but that he did make not a commitment to his policy on the country.
Taiwan is a contentious topic in China, with both countries claiming sovereignty over the other, but Trump stated that he did not believe that there was a conflict in Taiwan and refused to clarify his stance on the struggle between the two countries, telling reporters that he had not thrown his support behind either side and stating “we’re not trying to have wars”.
The issue was brought up while with Xi in China, with Trump responding to questions about the hostility by simply saying “China is beautiful”.
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China markets fall as Trump leaves Beijing
The Chinese markets have fallen after the US-China summit that took place in Beijing, despite Donald Trump touting new business deals between the two countries.
China’s blue-chip CSI300 Index and the Shanghai Composite Index each fell more than 1%, while The Hang Seng in Hong Kong lost 1.6%.
Big deals between the two superpowers had been expected, but the only agreements that came out of Trump’s two day trip were arrangements for US oil and soybean, as well as unconfirmed deal for China to purchase 200 Boeing jets.
Summary
If you’re just catching up, these ere are the latest developments from Trump’s summit with Xi:
Trump declared that numerous deals had been struck between the US and China, including China buying 200 Boeing jets as well as US oil and soybeans. This deal has not been confirmed by either China or Boeing.
Trump also stated that the he and Xi discussed Iran, with the president claiming that the two agreed that Iran should never be able to possess nuclear weapons and that the strait of Hormuz must be opened as soon as possible.
No progress appears to have been made over the fate of Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong pro democracy activist who has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for collusion and sedition.
Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, told Bloomberg TV that an agreement for double-digit billions of dollars in agriculture sales to China is expected after Trump’s visit to Beijing.
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Despite Donald Trump’s claims over the success of his trip to China and the deals he achieved during it, doubt remains over whether the agreements he made will come to fruition.
When asked during a Friday morning briefing if China had in fact agreed to buy the 200 Boeing jets claimed by Trump, a spokesperson simply pointed towards that the “important consensus” that both sides had achieved during the visit and stated that the “essence of China-U.S. economic and trade relations is mutual benefit and win-win cooperation.”
Boeing themselves have not confirmed details of any order.
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Donald Trump has left China after a two-day summit with President Xi Jinping that failed to live up to the hype.
What will be remembered from this trip is Xi’s dark warning of “clashes and even conflicts” with the US if the status of Taiwan is not handled as he sees fit - and Trump’s failure to push back in even a subtle way.
Indeed, past US presidents have come to China with an approach reminiscent of Britain’s King Charles III’s recent visit to Washington: gracious and diplomatic but making some coded points about western democracy that were undeniable to those paying attention.
But Trump, a would-be strongman, crumbled in the presence of the real thing and was deferential throughout, using the word “beautiful” over and over. The only upside is that he did not alienate his hosts or blow up their fragile trade truce.
Trump achieved underwhelming deals for China to buy US oil, soybeans and 200 Boeing aircraft and claims to have agreed with Xi that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon - hardly a major revelation. The presence of his son Eric, who runs the family business, smacked of corruption, and it was not entirely clear what the accompanying tech titans achieved apart from Elon Musk gurning for the cameras.
Trump now returns to a world of domestic pain in the US, with his brief China vacation soon to be forgotten. But the symbolism for Xi and the watching world was unmistakable: a rising power in the east and a declining one in the west.
Trump departs Beijing after talks with Xi
Donald Trump has now boarded Air Force One at Beijing Airport after spending around two hours in the Zhongnanhai leadership compound speaking and speaking privately with Xi Jinping.
The president was accompanied to the airport by Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi where a red carpet to awaited him, and sent off by dozens of schoolchildren, who waved American and Chinese flags and chanted “farewell” in unison.
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Summary
In case you’re just joining us, here’s a recap of the day’s events as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping wrap up the second and final day of talks in their much-anticipated two-day summit. It’s 2pm in Beijing.
The US president said “a lot of good” came from his China visit and “we’ve settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to solve”. “We’ve made some fantastic trade deals for both countries,” Trump said while sitting next to Xi in Beijing’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound, where they were to hold their final talks of the summit.
Trump also said: “We did discuss Iran. We feel very similar about [how] we want it to end. We don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the strait open.”
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the US policy on Taiwan had “not changed”. “It’s been pretty consistent across multiple presidential administrations, and remains consistent now,” he told NBC News.
The White House said Trump and Xi had agreed during their talks on the need to keep the strait of Hormuz open. Trump said separately that his patience with Iran was running out, as a ship was reportedly seized by Iran off the United Arab Emirates. “I am not going to be much more patient,” Trump told Fox News. “They should make a deal.”
Trump also said hunting down Iran’s enriched uranium was primarily for political optics, after Israel demanded it as a goal. “I just feel better if I got it, actually, but it’s – I think, it’s more for public relations than it is for anything else,” Trump told Fox News from China.
US trade representative Jamieson Greer told Bloomberg TV the US believed China was being “very pragmatic” in respect to its involvement with Iran, and that he was confident Beijing would do whatever it could to limit material support for Tehran.
Greer also said an agreement for double-digit billions of dollars in agriculture sales to China was expected after the Beijing summit. Asked by Bloomberg if the year-long trade truce with China expiring this October would be extended as a result of the Beijing summit, he said: “We’ll see about that ... there’s certainly a willingness on both sides that – if this continues to work out well for each country – to continue that…”
The US is hoping for a positive response from China on Washington’s appeals for the release of jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai and others, Marco Rubio told NBC.
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Asian stocks mostly retreated on Friday as investors watched for developments from the Trump-Xi summit and the Iran war.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.2% after rising earlier in the day. South Korea’s Kospi lost 3.2%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.9%, the Shanghai Composite index edged up 0.1% and Australia’s S+P/ASX 200 dipped 0.1%.
Taiwan’s Taiex traded 0.5% lower and India’s Sensex was up 0.1%.
While there is optimism over US-China relations, some analysts are suggesting any deals should be viewed cautiously, the AP reports.
“Headline deals should be looked at with a healthy degree of scepticism,” wrote Leahy Fahy and Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economists at Capital Economics, in a Friday note.
A number of the promised projects and investments that came out of US-China deals from Donald Trump’s last China visit in 2017 did not end up materialising, they said, as tensions between Washington and Beijing elevated rapidly during the few years after that.
Oil prices climbed early on Friday amid the stalled US-Iran talks over the war, with brent crude – the international standard – 1.3% higher at $107.06 per barrel.
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How Trump is spending last hours of the summit
Donald Trump’s final hours in Beijing are being spent in Xi Jinping’s private residence, a secretive site near the Forbidden City that few foreigners – or even locals – will ever get a glimpse of.
The US president will have lunch there with Xi before leaving Beijing in the early afternoon, less than 48 hours after he landed.
At a busy intersection near Trump’s hotel, the crowds that gathered to catch a glimpse of the presidential motorcade were thinner on Friday morning than on Thursday evening, with the heavy police presence encouraging people not to loiter. Many grumbled about the inconvenience caused by the repeated road closures.
Asked for their views on Trump, the word that came up again and again from Beijingers was “unpredictable”.
“What he says isn’t necessarily what it means,” said one Trump-watcher, who declined to give his name.
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As Trump and Xi hold their final talks in Beijing, the White House has shared the list of participants for the meetings.
Trump is joined by David Purdue, the US ambassador to China; secretary of state Marco Rubio; treasury secretary Scott Bessent; defense secretary Pete Hegseth and US trade representative Jamieson Greer.
Xi is joined by Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to the US; Cai Qi, a director of the central committee of the Communist party of China; foreign affairs minister Wang Yi; deputy foreign affairs minister Ma Zhaoxu; and He Lifeng, vice-premier of the state council.
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According to the Associated Press, Donald Trump did something highly unusual for him over the two days of meetings with Xi: he held his tongue in front of the media.
Trump relishes taking reporters’ questions, often doing so nearly every day in the US.
But Xi, like most China’s senior leadership, refrains from press conferences.
In what might have been deference to Xi, Trump didn’t answer questions when reporters asked them while the pair toured the Temple of Heaven on Thursday.
And he didn’t do so again on Friday while walking with Xi at Zhongnanhai.
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Trump says he 'won't be much more patient' with Iran
Returning now to Trump’s earlier comments on Iran, the US president said his patience with Iran was running out after he discussed the war with Xi Jinping on Thursday.
It came as a ship was reportedly seized by Iranian personnel off the United Arab Emirates.
The White House said Trump and Xi had agreed during their summit talks on the need to keep the strait of Hormuz open.
“I am not going to be much more patient,” Trump told Fox News’ Hannity program in an interview. “They should make a deal.”
In the latest incidents in the strait of Hormuz, an Indian cargo vessel carrying livestock from Africa to the UAE was sunk on Wednesday in waters off the coast of Oman.
India condemned the attack and said all 14 crew had been rescued by the Omani coast guard.
Vanguard, a British maritime security advisory firm, said the vessel was believed to have been hit by a missile or drone which caused an explosion.
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Before they sat together, Trump and Xi spent about 10 minutes walking in the gardens of the Zhongnanhai compound.
“These are the most beautiful roses anyone has ever seen,” Trump reportedly said while walking past green columns and archways.
Xi later said he would send some rose seeds to Trump “as a gift”.
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Trump says 'a lot of different problems' settled with Xi
Donald Trump just said his visit had been “incredible” and “I think a lot of good has come of it”.
“We’ve made some fantastic trade deals for both countries,” the US president said.
We’ve settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to solve.
Trump said his relationship with Xi Jinping was “a very strong one”.
Sitting beside Xi in Beijing’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound, Trump also said:
We did discuss Iran. We feel very similar about [how] we want it to end. We don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the strait open.”
He also said that “we want them to get it ended because it’s a crazy thing there”.
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Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are now sitting together in Beijing’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound complex and Xi is speaking.
Trump says getting Iran's enriched uranium 'more for public relations'
Before these final meetings of the Beijing summit, Donald Trump suggested that hunting down Iran’s enriched uranium was primarily for political optics, after Israel demanded it as a goal.
“I just feel better if I got it, actually, but it’s – I think, it’s more for public relations than it is for anything else,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview from China.
“The other thing we could do is bomb it again,” Trump said. “But I, just, I would feel better getting it, and we will get it.”
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who alongside Trump ordered the attacks on Iran that began on 28 February, said in a recent interview that the war was “not over” because the sensitive nuclear material “has to be taken out” of the country, Agence France-Presse reports.
Iran has not confirmed the location of its highly enriched uranium, which some experts believe could be buried deep underground, making the task of seizing it prohibitively difficult without precise intelligence.
Trump, in a social media post on Friday referring to his second administration’s achievements, said they included “the military decimation of Iran (to be continued!)”.
Xi and Trump meet at Chinese leadership compound
Donald Trump has reportedly arrived at Beijing’s Zhongnanhai complex – China’s leadership compound – for a meeting with Xi Jinping.
The two leaders are set to pose together in the gardens of the walled-off compound – next to the Chinese capital’s Forbidden City – and then have a working tea and a closed-door lunch.
Afterwards their two-day summit wraps up and the US president is to leave China for Washington on Friday afternoon.
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The US trade representative also said rare earth exports from China to the US were improving but Beijing was still slow to approve some shipments.
Jamieson Greer told Bloomberg TV that China was still dragging its feet with some export licenses and US officials had to intervene on the behalf of affected companies.
“I would give them a passing grade on this,” he said in the interview.
We’ve certainly seen the rare earths come back up to better levels. Sometimes it’s slow. There are times when we have to go and make our point.”
China introduced the rare earth export controls in April 2025 in retaliation for Donald Trump’s tariffs, and the controls reportedly continue to tightly restrict exports of some rare earths despite a deal last October in which the White House says Beijing agreed to allow shipments to freely flow.
See our quick explainer here on why rare earths are so important and have been a flashpoint in diplomacy and trade:
Greer was also asked on Bloomberg TV if the one-year trade truce with China expiring this October would be extended as a result of the Beijing summit. He responded:
We’ll see about that ... there’s certainly a willingness on both sides that – if this continues to work out well for each country – to continue that, and to extend this ability to make sure we’re getting rare earths, that we’re selling the types of things we should be selling to China, and we’re trying to manage differences rather than escalate them.”
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Jamieson Greer also said US export controls on semiconductor chips were not a major topic of discussions with Chinese officials in Beijing.
The US trade representative’s comments to Bloomberg on Friday suggest a breakthrough on selling Nvidia’s advanced H200 chips to China remains far away, Reuters is reporting, despite Nvidia chief Jensen Huang’s last-minute invitation to Donald Trump’s Beijing trip this week.
Greer said:
This was not a major topic of discussion at the bilateral meeting. We did not talk about chip export controls at the meeting.”
Greer added that “15 to 17” US chief executives present at Thursday’s meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping spoke about their companies’ issues.
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US confident China will try to limit material support for Iran – Greer
Returning to US trade representative Jamieson Greer and the Iran war, he said the US was confident China would do whatever it could to limit material support for Tehran amid the war.
Asked on Bloomberg TV on Friday if he thought Xi Jinping would pressure Tehran and help the US get the strait of Hormuz reopened, Greer said:
First of all, it’s really important for China to have the strait of Hormuz open – no tolling, no military control. That was clear from the meeting, so we welcome that.
With respect to Chinese involvement with Iran, our view is the Chinese are being very pragmatic – they don’t want to be on the wrong side of this. They want to see peace in that area, President Trump wants to see peace in that area, so we have a lot of confidence that they will do what they can to limit any kind of material support for Iran.”
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Trump has also reportedly told Fox News that getting Iran’s enriched uranium is more for public relations than anything else.
Key event
Donald Trump has said China wants to buy oil from the US and that it will be buying a lot of American farm products.
He also told Fox News that Xi Jinping probably has the ability to influence Iran, amid expectations the US will urge Beijing at the summit to help convince Tehran to make a deal ending the war.
Trump also said on the network’s Hannity program that he was “not going to be much more patient” over Iran but that the Iranian leaders the US was dealing with were reasonable.
He also said Xi Jinping was “all business” and no games, and that China would open up the country in stages.
Xi told a delegation of US business executives who travelled with Trump to Beijing that China would “open wider” to the world.
“American companies will enjoy even brighter prospects in China,” Xi was quoted as saying on Thursday.
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US trade representative Jamieson Greer has told Bloomberg TV that an agreement for double-digit billions of dollars in agriculture sales to China is expected after Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing.
He also said it was important to China to have the strait of Hormuz open, and that the US believed Beijing was very pragmatic in respect to its involvement with Iran.
More on Greer’s comments soon.
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By the time Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Thursday, the bilateral had featured all the expected pomp and pageantry.
Conspicuously absent at the negotiating table, however, were women from either delegation – a stark visual that quickly drew criticism from observers who saw it as an unmistakable display of patriarchal power.
In a post on X that attracted more than 33,000 likes overnight, Gita Gopinath, an economics professor at Harvard University, said:
A painting of the end of meritocracy: A meeting of the two largest economies and not one woman at the table.”
See the full report from Maya Yang here:
Why does Donald Trump look so at home in China?
The US president spent day one of his summit in Beijing basking in rigid pageantry, heroically managing not to offend his hosts and offering the verdict: “China is beautiful.”
A man who has shown authoritarian yearnings in his own country – discrediting elections, cowing universities, accusing journalists of treason – visibly delighted in one where the strongman fantasy is made flesh.
Not for the first time, he was far better behaved in one of the world’s most repressive regimes than when he shows up in Europe’s democracies like a human wrecking ball.
There has been a strange, uncharacteristic deference and circumspection about Trump since he left Washington.
See the full piece here:
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Donald Trump began his final day in Beijing with a defensive social media post claiming Xi Jinping was not talking about him when he “very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation”.
The US president said the Chinese leader’s comments referred to former president Joe Biden.
Xi was only complimentary about Trump’s actions since returning to the White House in January last year, Trump said in his post on Truth Social.
President Xi was not referring to the incredible rise that the United States has displayed to the world during the 16 spectacular months of the Trump Administration … In fact, President Xi congratulated me on so many tremendous successes in such a short period of time.”
Trump also said:
Two years ago, we were, in fact, a Nation in decline. On that, I fully agree with President Xi! But now, the United States is the hottest Nation anywhere in the world, and hopefully our relationship with China will be stronger and better than ever before!”
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US policy on Taiwan ‘unchanged’ – Rubio
US secretary of state Marco Rubio has said the US policy on Taiwan is “unchanged” after the summit talks between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing.
“Our policies on that have not changed,” Rubio told NBC News. “It’s been pretty consistent across multiple presidential administrations, and remains consistent now.”
Xi warned Trump on Thursday that China and the US could come into conflict if the issue over self-ruled Taiwan – claimed by Beijing – is mishandled.
“The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations,” Xi said.
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Welcome summary
Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are set to meet on Friday to wrap up a high-stakes two-day state visit that has featured pomp and business deals but also a stark warning from Xi that mishandling the Taiwan issue could push US-China relations to “a very dangerous place”.
Trump is on the first visit by a US president to China since 2017 and has been hoping for tangible results that might improve his sagging approval ratings ahead of the crucial midterm elections.
The two leaders are scheduled to have tea and lunch today before Trump flies back to the US.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio told NBC in an interview broadcast on Thursday that the US was hoping for a positive response from China on Washington’s appeals for the release of jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai and others.
Lai, a prominent pro-democracy activist and critic of the Chinese Communist party, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong after being found guilty of national security and sedition offences. He later said he would not appeal against his conviction, opening the door for political negotiations to his release.
During the Beijing summit Trump has also been expected to urge China to convince Iran to make a deal with Washington to end a war unpopular with American voters. A brief US summary of Thursday’s talks highlighted what the White House called the leaders’ shared desire to reopen the strait of Hormuz and Xi’s apparent interest in buying US oil to reduce China’s dependence on Middle East supplies.
In other developments:
Trump told Fox News that China had agreed to order 200 Boeing jets – its first purchase of US-made commercial jets in nearly a decade. But markets were expecting a much higher number, with earlier news reports suggesting 500 or more could be involved, and Boeing shares fell more than 4% after the comments.
Xi’s remarks on Taiwan, the democratically governed island Beijing claims, represented a sharp warning during a pomp-filled summit that otherwise appeared friendly and relaxed. They came in a closed-door meeting that ran for more than two hours, Beijing said.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio told NBC News that Taiwan was discussed, saying the Chinese “always raise it ... we always make clear our position and we move on to the other topics”. Rubio is among a large contingent of US officials and business leaders who travelled with Trump to China.
At a lavish state banquet on Wednesday, Xi called the China-US relationship the most important in the world and added: “We must make it work and never mess it up.” Trump earlier told Xi their two countries were “going to have a fantastic future together”.
The summit has been aimed at maintaining a fragile trade truce struck when the leaders last met in October and Trump suspended triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods and Xi backed away from choking global supplies of vital rare earths.
With news agencies
