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”.
Key events
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 reported 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 the interview. “They should make a deal.”
In the latest incidents in the Hormuz strait, 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.
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”.
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”.
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
Trump has also reportedly told Fox News that getting Iran’s enriched uranium is more for public relations than anything else.
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.
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.
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:
David Smith
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:
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!”
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.
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
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