Trump speaks at summit in South Korea ahead of meeting with China’s Xi Jinping

Washington — President Trump arrived in Gyeongju, South Korea, on Wednesday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and his highly anticipated meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Mr. Trump will address the summit on Wednesday morning local time and is expected to meet with Xi a day later. He is also expected to meet at some point with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, as the chip giant partners with the Department of Energy to build an artificial intelligence supercomputer and pushes for greater access to the Chinese market.

This stopover marks the last leg of his tour in Asia, after visits to Malaysia and Japan during a five-day period largely focused on trade and economic ties in the South Pacific. Mr. Trump aims to shore up trade deals and impose tariffs on other countries. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday this supplement 100% rates that Mr. Trump had threatened over Chinese goods were “effectively ruled out” after a two-day meeting with a Chinese negotiator.

Gyeongju, with a population of around 250,000 in southeastern Korea, is on the opposite side of Seoul, the national capital, and is therefore further from neighboring North Korea. Mr. Trump has said he would be willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his trip, but no such meeting has been planned. During Mr. Trump’s first term, he became the first sitting president to visit North Koreaa trip that happened after he sent an invitation to Kim on social networks.

APEC is a regional economic group with 21 member countries around the Pacific, whose promotion of free trade is a major part of the forum – despite Mr Trump’s push for higher tariffs for many member countries. APEC members include China, Mexico, Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam.

The president is seeking a trade deal with South Korea, the United States’ sixth-largest trading partner. Over the summer, Mr. Trump announced a framework agreement this involves the United States imposing 15% tariffs on South Korean products, while South Korea invests billions in American industry and opens its market to American cars. Bessent told reporters that the South Korea deal likely would not be resolved this week, but that it was close.

Before leaving Tokyo, Mr. Trump also signed a trade agreement with new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Tuesday, cementing 15% tariffs on imported Japanese goods, lower than the 25% initially threatened by the president. Japan also pledged $550 billion in investment in U.S. manufacturing. And the president announced trade frameworks with Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand earlier in his trip.

Mr Trump’s meeting with China’s Xi could be tense, as the two world powers have clashed for months over trade and tariffs.

The president is pressuring Xi to ease a series of tough export restrictions on rare earth elements, which are essential for everything from computer chips to aerospace, by threatening 100% tariffs starting Saturday unless Beijing backs down.

The trade war also led China to suspend purchases of U.S. soybeans, which hit U.S. farmers, although Bessent said Sunday it hopes soy boycott will end. And Mr. Trump needs Chinese approval for a deal to transfer TikTok’s U.S. operations from Beijing-based parent company ByteDance.

Nicholas Burns, the Biden-era U.S. ambassador to China, told CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes that Wednesday’s meeting was “very important,” calling the trade war a “test of wills” between the world’s two largest economies.

“China is America’s most important competitor and adversary in the entire world today. It will be in the future,” Burns said. “So the stakes are high because we face a lot of competition issues with China.”