Trump hails ‘amazing’ meeting with Xi in South Korea

US President Donald Trump has hailed an “wonderful” assembly together with his Chinese language counterpart, Xi Jinping, amid rising hopes for a de-escalation of tensions between the world’s two greatest economies.Beijing was much less effusive, saying the 2 facet had reached a consensus to resolve “main commerce points” in the course of the leaders’ first face-to-face assembly in six years.Trump’s commerce warfare had set off tit-for-tat tariffs that shot previous 100% on each side, however they agreed to a truce in Might – though tensions remained excessive.Thursday’s talks didn’t result in a proper settlement however the bulletins counsel they’re nearer to a deal – the main points of which have lengthy been topic to behind-the-scenes negotiations.Commerce offers usually take years to barter, and international locations around the globe have been thrown into resolving variations with the present Trump administration inside a matter of months.One key win for Trump is that China has agreed to droop export management measures it had positioned on uncommon earths, essential for the manufacturing of every thing from smartphones to fighter jets.A jubilant president instructed reporters on Air Drive One which he had additionally received China to start out instantly shopping for a “super quantities of soybeans and different farm merchandise”. Retaliatory tariffs on American soybeans by Beijing had successfully halted imports from the US, harming US farmers – a key voting block for Trump.There was, nonetheless, no point out of a breakthrough on TikTok. The US has sought to take the video-sharing app’s US operations away from Chinese language dad or mum firm ByteDance for nationwide safety causes. Beijing stated afterwards it will proceed to work to resolve the problems.In the meantime, the US has stated it’ll drop a part of the tariffs it has levied on Beijing over the movement of components utilized in making fentanyl to the US. Trump has imposed extreme tariffs on the US’s prime commerce companions for his or her perceived failure to clamp down on the drug.Nevertheless, it appears different tariffs, or taxes on imported items, will stay in place, which means that items arriving within the US from China are nonetheless being taxed at a fee of over 40% for US importers.Beijing may even be capable of converse to Jensen Huang, the pinnacle of US tech agency Nvidia – in response to Trump. Nvidia is on the coronary heart of the 2 international locations’ battle over AI chips: China desires high-end chips however the US desires to restrict China’s entry, citing nationwide safety.Beijing has additionally prolonged an invite to Trump to go to China in April – yet one more signal of thawing relations.However the assembly additionally confirmed the gulf between the 2 leaders’ approaches.Xi was self-contained, and stated solely what he had ready. He entered the assembly figuring out he had a robust hand. China had realized from Trump’s first time period, leveraging its chokehold on uncommon earths, and diversifying its commerce companions so it’s much less reliant on the US.Afterwards, he was way more measured in his language than Trump. The 2 sides could be engaged on delivering outcomes that can function a “reassuring tablet” for each international locations’ economies, he stated.Trump was – as at all times – extra ad-lib. However the US president was additionally noticeably extra tense than he had been for the remainder of his whirlwind journey to South East Asia – a mirrored image of the excessive stakes in Thursday’s assembly.The glamour and pageantry on present since he arrived at his first cease in Malaysia simply 5 days in the past was additionally absent.Gone have been the gold-laden palaces of the kind he was welcomed to in Japan on Tuesday. As a substitute, a constructing at an airport, mendacity behind barbed wire and safety checkpoints.The army bands which welcomed Trump to South Korea on Wednesday have been nowhere to be seen.As a substitute, the one signal one thing necessary was happening inside was the heavy police and media presence.However regardless of the quieter public face, what was taking place inside was arguably probably the most important hour and 20 minutes of the journey.Henry Wang, a former adviser to China’s State Council, instructed BBC Radio 4’s At the moment programme that Trump and Xi’s talks “went very effectively”.It could not have been a commerce deal, however a “framework and construction has been laid”, he added – calling it “an excellent begin”.