The president said he will visit China in April 2026.
GYEONGJU, South Korea—U.S. President Donald Trump announced a series of trade deals Thursday after a meeting with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and said he agreed to reduce tariffs on China in exchange for other economic concessions.
“I thought it was an amazing meeting,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One shortly after he departed Busan, South Korea, following the nearly two-hour-long meeting with Xi.
“It was a good meeting for two very large, powerful countries, and that’s the way we should get along.”
Tariffs will drop 10 percent—which brings levies on Chinese imports to 47 percent—with Beijing agreeing to resume purchasing soybeans from American farmers, allow for the export of rare earth metals, and mitigate the flow of dangerous fentanyl precursors.
Trump imposed tariffs against China in January to incentivize Beijing to proactively regulate fentanyl, its precursors, and similar analog substances.
The president has repeatedly accused Chinese businesses of profiting from the death of Americans and contributing to the sharp increase in opioid deaths around the world in recent years.
“I believe he’s going to work very hard to stop the death that’s coming in,” Trump said.
“President Xi, I think, was very strong in saying he was going to enforce those laws internally. And of course, we’ll watch that.”
The two leaders met at South Korea’s Gimhae Air Base at approximately 11:15 a.m. local time for the bilateral discussion—the first time Trump and Xi have met in person since Trump returned to the White House in January. Their last meeting was in Osaka, Japan, in 2019, when both attended the G20 summit.
The meeting, which took place on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, lasted nearly two hours.
American and Chinese trade negotiators worked together over recent weeks to develop a framework—announcing Oct. 26 they expected a favorable meeting between Trump and Xi—for the agreements discussed Thursday.
The U.S. president highlighted the progress made during the two leaders’ discussions.
“A lot of decisions were made. There wasn’t too, too much left out there,” Trump said. “We’ve come to a conclusion on many, very important points.”
By Travis Gillmore and Catherine Yang
