Closing summary
With the president unusually quiet after his return from Beijing, we are going to end our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
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Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, commuted the sentence of Tina Peters, a former county clerk who was convicted of breaching voting machine security after the 2020 election to hunt for evidence the election was stolen from Donald Trump.
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Democratic officials, and Republicans leaders in the conservative county who said she made them “a national laughing stock” were outraged by the commutation.
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Colorado Republican representative Lauren Boebert welcomed the commutation and told local news that Trump had blocked federal funds for clean drinking water in Colorado to punish state officials for keeping Peters in jail on state charges he was powerless to pardon. “We were told that Tina was the reason we couldn’t get water”, Boebert said.
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Jena Griswold, Colorado’s top election official, said: “The Governor’s actions today will validate and embolden the election denial movement, and leave a dark, dangerous imprint on American democracy for years to come.”
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Dan Rubinstein, the Republican district attorney of Mesa County, Colorado, who helped prosecute Peters, told a Colorado news channel the decision by Polis to commute her sentence is “out of touch with Western Colorado”.
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Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, who was appointed in December acting director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, making her the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired on Friday after refusing to resign.
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Steve Cohen, the lone House Democrat from Tennessee, ended his re-election bid after his district was redrawn in the state’s new congressional map.
Senator John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat, also dissents from the decision by his state’s governor, Jared Polis, to free Tina Peters half way through the former county clerk’s jail term for breaching voting machine security in pursuit of Donald Trump’s stolen election lies.
Hickenlooper wrote:
Tina Peters is guilty as sin and a disgrace to Colorado. She tried to undermine Colorado’s free and fair election system. When she was caught red-handed, she was prosecuted by a Republican district attorney and rightfully convicted by a jury of her peers. Reducing her sentence sends the wrong message to those seeking to undermine trust in our elections and it will do nothing to deter Donald Trump’s illegal attacks on Colorado. I strongly disagree with this decision.
Add Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the Committee on House Administration in Congress, which has jurisdiction over federal elections, to the list of those disturbed by the decision by Jared Polis, under pressure from Donald Trump, to commute the sentence of Tina Peters, an election conspiracy theorist who was jailed for a breach of voting machine security in the Colorado county where she was a clerk.
“Governor Polis’ decision to reduce Tina Peters’ sentence sends the wrong message at the wrong time,” Morelle said in a statement. “Election officials across America work tirelessly to protect the integrity of our democracy, often in the face of threats and intimidation. Tina Peters violated the public trust and was held accountable by a jury of her peers. At a moment when Donald Trump and his allies continue to spread dangerous lies about our elections, undermining accountability only weakens confidence in the rule of law and makes the work of safeguarding free and fair elections even harder”.
Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator says she was fired after refusing to resign
Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, who was appointed in December acting director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, making her the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired on Friday after refusing to resign.
“Today marked 6 months as head of CDER at @FDA & today I was fired,” Høeg posted on social media.
In an interview with the science writer Maryanne Demasi, Høeg said that two FDA officials told her she could either resign or be fired.
“I said I didn’t want to resign,” Høeg told Demasi. “I said I’m not signing a letter of resignation if it’s not my choice.”
According to Høeg, the officials said her ouster was ordered by “someone way above their pay grade.”
Before Høeg joined the FDA, she worked in Dr Vinay Prasad’s lab at the University of California San Francisco’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and co-authored with him a 2023 letter to the New England Journal of Medicine questioning a study of the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19.
Boebert says Trump blocked funds for clean drinking water in Colorado over Tina Peters
Colorado Republican representative Lauren Boebert welcomed governor Jared Polis’s commutation of Tina Peters, the former Colorado county clerk jailed for breaching voting machine security to hunt for evidence the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
In her statement, Boebert took some credit, and gave even more to Trump.
“I’m proud of the relentless pressure my office and I applied, working hand-in-hand with President Donald Trump, to highlight Tina’s case and demand fairness,” the congresswoman wrote. “This outcome would not have been possible without the continued pressure and advocacy from President Trump who always knew Tina deserved fairness under the law.”
In comments to 9News Denver on Friday, Boebert said that she hoped the release of Peters would convince Trump to stop blocking funds for a federal project to bring clean drinking water to Colorado. “We were told that Tina was the reason we couldn’t get water”, Boebert said, an apparent reference to Trump exerting on Colorado’s governor the same kind of pressure he put on Ukraine’s president in 2019, when he withheld congressionally mandated military aid to try to force Ukraine to open a sham investigation into Joe Biden. Trump was impeached for that scheme in 2019.
In January, the president vetoed a bill that would have funded a drinking water project in Boebert’s Colorado district, after it passed the House and Senate unanimously.
Trump cited financial concerns, but Boebert pointed out on the House floor that Trump supported the project before he promised retaliation against Colorado for keeping Peters in jail and she joined the effort to force the administration to release files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sexual offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.
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Republican district attorney who helped prosecute Tina Peters denounces commutation
Dan Rubinstein, the Republican district attorney of Mesa County, Colorado, who helped prosecute Tina Peters, the former Colorado election clerk who allowed unauthorized people to access her county’s voting systems, told a Colorado news channel the decision by Jared Polis, the state’s governor, to commute her sentence is “out of touch with Western Colorado”.
Rubinstein also told Kyle Clark, a 9News Denver anchor, that Peters “made Mesa county a national laughing stock” by undermining voting machine security in a desperate search for proof of 2020 election conspiracy theories spread by fellow Trump supporters.
Clark reported from Mesa that it was unclear if Peters will retnr to live there, given that the county’s Republican leadership remains livid that she caused over a million dollars in damage to voting machines.
Supreme court rejects emergency request from Virginia Democrats to use redrawn congressional map
The US supreme court has declined to overturn a Virginia state supreme court ruling last week that threw out a new congressional map approved by state voters earlier this year.
Democrats in Virginia had championed the effort as a chance to pick up four US House seats – part of the larger redistricting battle underway to give their party an opportunity to take control of the chamber and gain leverage against Donald Trump’s agenda.
In a four-three decision last Friday, the Virginia supreme court found that Democratic lawmakers had not followed proper procedure last year when they rushed to approve the referendum in time to reach the ballot ahead of the November vote.
Joseph Gedeon and Cate Brown reporting:
The Pentagon has quietly dismantled a program it is legally required to operate to prevent and respond to civilian deaths in US military operations, according to its internal watchdog.
A report released by the department’s inspector general concluded the US military no longer has the people, tools or infrastructure needed to comply with two federal statutes requiring it to maintain a functioning civilian casualty policy, and operate a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CP CoE).
Donald Trump’s administration has been accused of making deep cuts to the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR) program, designed to handle training and procedures critical in limiting civilian harm in theaters of war.
While the program has not been officially canceled, the inspector general’s report said that funding had ended for a data management platform; committee meetings had halted; and many dedicated personnel had been lost or reassigned.
“As a result, the DoW may not comply with its civilian casualties and harm policy,” the report read. “A policy required by federal law.”
The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
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US Department of Justice plans to seek indictment former Cuban President Raúl Castro - reports
The US Department of Justice is preparing to seek an indictment against Cuba’s former president, Raúl Castro, three people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Friday.
A criminal indictment could form the basis for a re-run of the Trump administration’s raid on Venezuela to arrest its then president, Nicolás Maduro, after criminal charges were filed against him.
Donald Trump has repeatedly said in recent months that military action against the Caribbean nation could be imminent. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, whose parents emigrated from Cuba to the US before the Cuban revolution, was photographed on board Air Force One this week in the same grey Nike Tech tracksuit Maduro was wearing when he was captured and flown to New York in January.
One of the people told the AP that the potential indictment is connected to Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of four planes operated by a Miami-based exile group, Brothers to the Rescue. Raúl Castro was his brother Fidel’s defense minister at the time.
Tina Peters to be released 1 June, Colorado governor's commutation letter says
Tina Peters, a former Colorado county election official convicted of breaching election machine security to search for evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, will be released on parole on 1 June, according to a letter from Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis.
“I am commuting your sentence by granting you a limited commutation such that your total sentence, inclusive of time in County Jail and the Department of Corrections, is commuted to 4 years and 4.5 months, and you shall be released on parole effective June 1, 2026, with terms and conditions of parole to be set by the Parole Board,” Polis wrote to Peters on Friday.
“The crimes you were convicted of are very serious and you deserve to spend time in prison for these offenses. However, this is an extremely unusual and lengthy sentence for a first time offender who committed nonviolent crimes,” Polis also told Peters in the commutation letter.
He went on to say that “the principle highlighted by the Colorado Court of Appeals in your case that, ‘...the First Amendment generally prohibits punishing someone for their protected speech.’”
Polis added that he agreed with the appeals court finding that “comments about Peters’s belief in the existence of 2020 election fraud” from the trial judge who sentenced Peters “went beyond relevant considerations for her sentencing. Her offense was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud; it was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud.”
The governor signed off the letter to Peters with the same formulation he used in dozens of other letter he issued on Friday: “This commutation will change your future. It is up to you to make the most of this opportunity. Good luck to you.”
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Colorado’s top election official says freeing Tina Peters 'will validate and embolden the election denial movement'
Jena Griswold, Colorado’s top election official, denounced governor Jared Polis’s decision to commute the sentence of Tina Peters, the Republican former county election official who was convicted of four felonies by a jury in heavily Republican Mesa County for breaching her own election equipment in 2021 in search of evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
“This clemency grant to Tina Peters is an affront to our democracy, the people of Colorado, and election officials across the country,” Griswold said in a statement. “The Governor’s actions today will validate and embolden the election denial movement, and leave a dark, dangerous imprint on American democracy for years to come.”
The secretary of state’s office also explained the background to the case:
In 2021, then-Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters compromised her county’s voting equipment trying to prove conspiracies. Secretary Griswold took swift action when discovering the incident, including decertifying the county’s voting equipment, working with Mesa County commissioners to remove Peters from election oversight, appointing a former Republican Secretary of State to oversee the election, and then leading the nation’s first law on insider threats.
Peters’ actions cost Mesa County nearly one million dollars in replacement equipment.
Colorado Democrats running for governor denounce current governor's decision to free Tina Peters
Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat who is running to be the state’s next governor, is not a fan of the current governor’s decision on Friday to commute the sentence of Tina Peters, a former country election clerk who breached voting machine security after the 2020 election to look for evidence of fraud that the election was stolen from fellow Republican Donald Trump.
“I vehemently disagree with Gov. Polis’s decision to commute Tina Peters’ sentence,” Bennet wrote on social media. “She broke the law, undermined our elections, and was convicted by a jury of her peers. With Trump continuing to attack Colorado, we must stand strong for our institutions and the rule of law.”
Phil Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general who is also a Democratic candidate for governor, was even more forceful, calling the decision “mind-boggling and wrong as a matter of basic justice”.
“She was convicted by a jury and sentenced for tampering with election equipment and undermining our elections. The judge imposed a reasonable sentence based on her criminal conduct, she has shown no remorse for her crimes, and now the governor is taking this unwise and unprecedented step of releasing her from prison early,” Weiser said in a statement.
“Caving in to this president will only lead to more abuse from the bullying Trump administration. Today is a sad day for Colorado and the rule of law,” he added.
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Who is Tina Peters, only public official jailed for trying to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss?
So who is Tina Peters, the Republican whose jail sentence was commuted on Friday by Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis?
As our colleague Sam Levine explained in March:
Peters was the county clerk in western Colorado’s Mesa county in 2020 and allowed an unauthorized person to use a security badge and access her county’s voting equipment. Passwords and other sensitive information related to the county’s election equipment later became public and was used by election deniers to try to question the 2020 election results.
In 2024, a jury found Peters guilty of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty, and failure to comply with the secretary of state. She was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Donald Trump has repeatedly urged Polis to pardon Peters as part of a continued effort to spread false information about the 2020 election. Earlier this year he issued a federal pardon for Peters, which had no bearing on her case because she is convicted of state crimes…
Peters’s case has been a cause celebre among Trump and supporters because she remains the only person incarcerated for attempting to overturn the 2020 election after Trump issued sweeping pardons to those involved in the January 6 riot and aides who assisted with the false elector scheme.
Polis suggested in March that he was considering some form of clemency for Peters, after a Trump issued a stream of threats to withhold funds from Colorado
Writing on social media then, Polis compared Peters’s case to that of a former state senator, Sonya Jaquez Lewis, who was also convicted of four felonies, including an attempt to influence a public official. Lewis was sentenced to probation and community service. Lewis’s charges came from forged letters she submitted from staff as part of a legislative inquiry into whether she mistreated aides.
“It is not lost on me that she was convicted of the exact same felony charge as Tina Peters – attempting to influence a public official – and yet Tina Peters, as a non-violent first time offender got a nine year sentence,” Polis wrote on X. “Justice in Colorado and America needs to be applied evenly, you never know when you might need to depend on the rule of law. This is the context I am using as I consider cases like this that have sentencing disparities.”
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Colorado’s governor Jared Polis commutes sentence of Tina Peters, 2020 election denier
Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, announced on Friday that he has decided to commute the sentence of Tina Peters, a former county clerk in the state who was convicted of plotting to examine voting machines under her control after the 2020 election to search for evidence the election had been rigged against Donald Trump.
In a local TV interview, the governor said that he had decided to commute her sentence to four-and-a-half years, making her eligible for parole next month.
Polis told the local TV anchor Kyle Clark: “She committed a crime. What’s an issue here is how long the sentence is.”
“I agree with the appeals court that in the sentencing hearing, the judge incorrectly looked at and considered her bizarre viewpoints, her speech, and held her speech against her,” he added.
Polis also read a statement from Peters, a conspiracy theorist who has described herself as a political prisoner, in which she said: “I made mistakes, and for those, I’m sorry. Five years ago, I misled the secretary of state when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong. I have learned and grown during my time in prison, and going forward, I will make sure that my actions always follow the law, and I’ll avoid the mistakes of the past.”
The governor also clarified that he never considered pardoning Peters since she showed no remorse.
“I don’t think that she’s remorseful for the opinions that she has or for belief in conspiracies,” Polis said. “Her beliefs are her beliefs. I vehemently disagree with much of what she has to say, certainly her conspiratorial beliefs.”
The governor said that the way to rebut those false claims was “disputing her incorrect information and data. It’s not to lock somebody up because they believe something that is not only unpopular and incorrect, but also conspiratorial and potentially dangerous.”
In recent months, Trump has repeatedly demanded that Peters be released from jail, in social media posts and interviews in which he gave an entirely false account of the election security breach she committed and was convicted of in 2024. The president repeatedly claimed that Peters had caught people cheating, which is not true. She breached election security in search of evidence of fraud in the voting machines used in 2020, but failed to find any evidence.
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Jeanine Pirro threatens to 'aggressively prosecute parents' of teens who violate DC curfew
At a news conference on Friday, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, and former daytime television star, Jeanine Pirro announced a crackdown on so-called “teen takeovers” in Washington and said that her office would “aggressively prosecute parents” if their children are found to violate the district’s curfew for minors.
Pirro’s office lacks the authority to prosecute children, with limited exceptions for some violent crimes, but said a local law gives her the power to prosecute parents.
Washington’s curfew for under-18s is 11pm on weeknights and midnight on weekends, but new legislation could impose an 11pm curfew on weekends and allow the local police chief to declare special 8pm curfew zones in certain areas.
The announcement came as federal officials promised a surge of forces from federal agencies and the national guard to police Washington DC during celebrations of the nation’s 250th anniversary, including a mixed martial arts fight at the White House on Donald Trump’s 80th birthday next month.
“We are surging police and military to secure the capital for America 250,” Trump’s chief domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, posted on social media. “Criminals will have no safe quarter.”
Pirro’s threat might sound familiar to viewers of her daytime television show, Judge Pirro, which included an episode in which she scolded the parent of a child and suggested that the should be charged with a crime for not stopping her 13-year-old daughter from having sex.
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Here's a recap of the day so far
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Steve Cohen, the lone House Democrat from Tennessee, announced that he would not seek re-election after his district was redrawn in the state’s new congressional map. “This is by far the most difficult moment I’ve had as an elected official,” Cohen, who has served in the US House since 2007, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Friday. “I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to beat me.” The new map, passed by Tennessee’s GOP-dominated legislature last week, splits up the ninth district and funnels Black voters in the Memphis area into three different constituencies.
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After Cohen announced that he would not seek re-election to Congress, Hakeem Jeffries praised his colleague’s time in office. “The city of Memphis, the Congress and the nation are better because of Steve’s commitment to making a difference,” the top House Democrat said of Cohen.
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Thousands of US stock trades surfaced in Donald Trump’s ethics filing this week. Trump disclosed at least $220m in financial dealings in the securities of dominant American companies this year, including Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Oracle, Broadcom, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, as first reported by Reuters. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization told the Guardian that the president, his family and the Trump Organization do not play a role in selecting, directing or approving specific investments made in his name.
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Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s Republican governor, signed an executive order ordering a special redistricting session ahead of the midterm elections. The Friday session will focus on whether to redraw the state’s map to essentially get rid of the majority-minority district that Democrat currently James Clyburn represents. However, a number of South Carolina Republicans fear that mid-decade redistricting would actually weaken GOP voting power in newly drawn districts.
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Lebanon and Israel have agreed to a 45-day extension of their ceasefire, after two “productive” days of talks hosted by the US, according to state department spokesperson Tommy Pigott. In a statement, he added that the state department will “reconvene the political track of negotiations” on 2 June and 3 June.
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US state department says Lebanon and Israel agree to a 45-day ceasefire extension
Lebanon and Israel have agreed to a 45-day extension of their ceasefire, after two “productive” days of talks hosted by the US, according to state department spokesperson Tommy Pigott.
In a statement, he added that the state department will “reconvene the political track of negotiations” on 2 June and 3 June.
“We hope these discussions will advance lasting peace between the two countries, full recognition of each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and establishing genuine security along their shared border,” Pigott said.
Trump pushes endorsement for Letlow in Louisiana Senate primary
Ahead of Louisiana’s US Senate primary tomorrow, the president posted on Truth Social on his way back from China to repeat his support for Republican congresswoman Julia Letlow.
“She is a TOTAL WINNER!” Trump wrote on social media. “She has my Complete and Total Endorsement, and will never let you down!”
The president announced his backing for the representative earlier this year as a hardline challenger to Senator Bill Cassidy, the incumbent who is one of three sitting Republicans who voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial.
Cassidy, who also chairs the Senate health committee, has drawn the ire of the president, and has been critical of the administration’s Make America Healthy Again (Maha) agenda. Although Cassidy cast a deciding vote to confirm Robert F Kennedy Jr as Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, he has since questioned many of his policy decisions.
Letlow is also facing another known entity in the Louisiana primary – the state’s treasurer John Fleming.
While the Senate primary will still take place on Saturday, after Louisiana lawmakers voted to pass a new congressional map that would eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black House districts this week. If the state’s lower chamber lawmakers pass the map, the House race now stands to be an open primary on 3 Novembe, where all US House candidates, regardless of party affiliation, would be on the ballot in Louisiana for voters in their district.
A reminder that the Republican governor, Jeff Landry, suspended the state’s House primary elections after the supreme court gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act.
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Supreme court Justice Samuel Alito is resisting climate advocates’ calls for him to sit out a major case that could benefit the fossil fuel industry.
In a statement to NBC news, a spokesperson for the high court said that “his recusal is not required”.
“Justice Alito does not have a financial interest in any party” involved in the case in question, the spokesperson told the outlet.
The pushback came one day after a coalition of environmental advocacy organizations and progressive watchdog groups called on the Senate judiciary committee to investigate Alito’s financial ties to oil companies, noting that the justice’s most recent financial disclosure showed he had holdings in ConocoPhillips, Phillips66 and five other oil and energy companies, and also has sums invested in a Vanguard fund in which Exxon is the third-largest holding.
“His irregular recusal practice in oil and gas industry-related cases is undermining public confidence in the impartiality of the Court,” reads the letter, whose signatories included the Center for Biological Diversity, the Revolving Door Project and scores of other progressive groups.
Alito did not recuse himself from a case slated to be decided in the court’s next term. It focuses on a bid by energy companies ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy to find that federal law prevents subnational governments from filing lawsuits against oil and gas companies for the climate-warming effects of their products.
The supreme court in February agreed to take up the case brought by the oil majors Suncor Energy and Exxon. Alito weighed in on the decision.
But two years earlier, had recused himself from considering a petition brought by the same companies in the same lawsuit. The court rejected the companies’ request to weigh in on that petition. The court did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
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Hakeem Jeffries says 'Congress and the nation' are better for Cohen's tenure in office
After Steve Cohen announced that he would not seek re-election to Congress, Hakeem Jeffries praised his colleague’s time in office.
“The city of Memphis, the Congress and the nation are better because of Steve’s commitment to making a difference,” the top House Democrat said of Cohen.
Jeffries also pointed to Cohen’s accomplishment as the first Jewish person elected to represent Tennessee in the Congress, and his work as a champion for civil rights. Steve has been a powerful champion for civil rights, and social justice issues.
Meanwhile, in Columbia, South Carolina lawmakers are at the state legislature ahead of holding a special session to settle the proposed change to the state’s congressional districts.
“Time is of the essence and its important that we act sooner than later,” said Jay Jordan, a Republican state representative, in response to a question about whether the redistricting can be achieved in time without any legal hurdles, for the upcoming elections.
Lone Tennessee House Democrat says he will end re-election bid after state gerrymander
Steve Cohen, the lone House Democrat from Tennessee, announced that he would not seek re-election after his district was redrawn in the state’s new congressional map.
“This is by far the most difficult moment I’ve had as an elected official,” Cohen, who has served in the US House since 2007, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Friday. “I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to beat me.”
The new map, passed by Tennessee’s GOP-dominated legislature last week, splits up the ninth district and funnels Black voters in the Memphis area into three different constituencies.
Now, all of Tennessee’s congressional districts are Republican-leaning. The state’s gerrymander came a week after the US supreme court effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act.
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Earlier, I brought you the news that thousands of US stock trades surfaced in Donald Trump’s recent ethics filings.
A spokesperson for the Trump Organization told the Guardian that the president, his family and the Trump Organization do not play a role in selecting, directing or approving specific investments made in his name.
They are not asked for inputs regarding the investment decision, the spokesperson added in response to questions about portfolio management raised after Trump’s ethics filings revealed thousands of trades tried to US stocks.
“President Trump’s investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions,” the spokesperson said.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit the US this fall, at the invitation of President Trump, Wang Yi, a top Chinese diplomat said, as reported by Xinhua, Chinese state media.
“The man I am walking with is President Xi, of China, one of the World’s Great Leaders!” posted Trump on Truth Social along with a photo on Friday morning after departing from China.
Trump also brought up the widely discussed White House ballroom in the post. “China has a Ballroom, and so should the U.S.A.! It’s under construction, ahead of schedule, and will be the finest facility of its kind anywhere in the U.S.A.,” he said, adding that the opening would be around September 2028.
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Kurt Campbell, regarded as the architect of Barack Obama’s China policy, who attended 15 China summits, said Xi’s reference to the Thucydides trap, would have not have gone down well with Trump, portraying the US as a falling nation.
“It is rare in a summit like that, that a relatively obscure academic concept captures some of the moment, but President Xi bringing up Thucydides’ Trap, and the concept of a rising and falling nation, and how hegemonic transitions take place, really got under the president’s skin,” he said.
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Thousands of US stock trades surfaced in Donald Trump’s ethics filing on Thursday afternoon. Trump disclosed at least $220m in financial dealings in the securities of dominant American companies this year, including Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Oracle, Broadcom, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, as first reported by Reuters.
The value of the transactions were reported in ranges and could be as high as approximately $750m, according to two financial disclosure forms shared by the US Office of Government Ethics.
Some large purchases, valued under $5m, included an S&P 500 Index fund, Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, while large sales, valued at more than $5m, included Microsoft, Amazon and Meta.
The White House press office referred questions about who placed the trades to the Trump Organization. Other details, such as the types of securities traded, were also unclear in the filings.
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South Carolina governor orders special redistricting session
Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s Republican governor, signed an executive order on Thursday ordering a special redistricting session ahead of the midterm elections.
This comes after state senators in South Carolina bucked Donald Trump’s demands earlier this week to approve plans to redraw the state’s congressional map after the supreme court gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act.
The president had urged them to back the redistricting proposal on Monday evening. The US president would be “watching closely”, he wrote on social media, adding: “GET IT DONE!”
“We appreciate Governor McMaster’s leadership in ensuring South Carolina addresses congressional redistricting,” said Drew McKissick, the state’s Republican party chair. “Thanks to the Supreme Court ruling, Republicans have an opportunity to get this done, and we should maximize it. Now is the time for lawmakers to stand with President Trump, defend the Constitution, and finish the job.”
The Friday session will focus on whether to redraw the state’s map to essentially get rid of the majority-minority district that Democrat currently James Clyburn represents. However, a number of South Carolina Republicans fear that mid-decade redistricting would actually weaken GOP voting power in newly-drawn districts.
Here's a recap of the day so far
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Donald Trump has departed Beijing after a two-day summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping.
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Trump said that during the visit he and Xi discussed a wide array of topics, with the conflict with Iran one of the most pressing. He claims that the US and China agreed that Iran should not have be able to produce nuclear weapons and that the strait of Hormuz must be opened as soon as possible, while also stating that he would consider ending sanctions on Chinese companies that bought Iranian oil.
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He also told reporters that he would be “OK” with Iran suspending their nuclear programme for 20 years, but only if they do so with “a real commitment”, while claiming that Iran’s missile capabilities had been reduced by 80% and described reports to the contrary as “treasonous”.
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Despite not agreeing on a large number of deals, Trump claims that China have agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets from the US, with a further 550 jets also possibly being bought at a later date, and said that they had also agreed to purchase “billions of dollars” of soybeans in a deal that he described as a big win for American farmers.
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Discussions also took place around China releasing 30 pastors who were arrested in late 2025 for being members of the Protestant Beijing Zion church. Despite this, Trump did not say that steps had been made to release Jimmy Lai, a political prisoner from Hong Kong who was sentenced to 20 years in jail for collusion and sedition.
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The issue of Taiwan was also discussed “a lot” according to Trump, but the president declined to elaborate on the details of these discussions or the position his government would take. Taiwan, which is engaged with a protracted conflict with China as each nation claims sovereign over the other, has historically received unofficial support from the US, and is one of its largest trading partners.
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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 onboard 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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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…”
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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”.
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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
