President Donald Trump will have a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday (the 19th), on the sidelines of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit, according to a White House spokesperson.
Xi is hosting this year’s summit, scheduled for November 18 and 19 in Shenzhen, China.
Trump has said that a three-way meeting would focus on denuclearization. Progress on this topic is unlikely, as China resists discussing limits to its nuclear arsenal with Russia and the United States, which have much larger stockpiles.
The meeting also comes at a time when Trump is seeking an exit from the war in Ukraine, which has lasted more than four years since Russia’s large-scale invasion at the start of 2022.
Trump intends to discuss the war in Iran with Putin and Xi, but is not expected to address Ukraine, according to a senior government official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss the travel plans. He said there is also no bilateral meeting planned between Trump and Putin.
The trip comes after Trump’s defeat in the November 3 midterm elections, when Democrats won control of the House and Senate. In Manila, the president will meet with the Quad leaders, a group comprising India, Japan, Australia and the United States. In the Philippine capital, he will also sign a trade agreement with Thailand and participate in the ASEAN summit, which this year is hosted by the Philippines.
Afterwards, Trump will head to Shenzhen, where he will meet Putin and Xi. There he will also make the third of four bilateral meetings with the Chinese leader scheduled for this year.
The meeting between Trump and Xi takes place as the White House deals with the fallout from the revelation that Jensen Huang, former Nvidia CEO, had an extramarital affair with Alice Huang, CEO of Megaspeed, whom US intelligence suspects of being a Chinese spy.
The episode raised fresh questions that the Trump administration ignored warnings that Nvidia’s head at the time was compromised and delayed export restrictions on the company’s chips. Senior government officials minimized the scandal and indicated that the affair should not interfere with the trip and that the president does not intend to raise the matter with Xi.
According to a second official, Trump also has no plans to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Earlier in the year, the president had expressed interest in such a meeting.
As leaders of the world’s two largest economies, Trump and Xi face several challenges ahead. Among them are trade and tariffs, the race in artificial intelligence, and global flashpoints such as Taiwan and the U.S. war against Iran.
The two last met in September, when Trump hosted Xi at the White House with much pomp, including a lavish state dinner. In that meeting, the leaders did not announce major breakthroughs. Still, they managed to keep the relationship stable after the turbulence at the start of Trump’s second term, when a trade war unsettled the markets.
The main announcement of the September meeting was the extension of the trade truce until January 2027. That deal, however, had already been closed before the official start of the state visit.
During the Washington meeting, Trump called Xi several times a friend, despite him leading a major geopolitical rival. In doing so, the president put aside the more delicate topics between the two countries, such as the war in Iran and Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing considers part of its territory.
The war in Iran, started by the U.S. and Israel in late February, and efforts to economically isolate Tehran have been testing the relationship between Washington and Beijing. In 2025, China was Iran’s second-largest trading partner and a major buyer of Iranian oil. With the American naval blockade choking Iran’s oil exports, Chinese refineries had to seek other suppliers.
Trump has also repeatedly speculated about the possibility of China selling weapons to Iran. He said he would be disappointed if Beijing did so and stated that Xi guaranteed that he would not.
The two leaders are set to meet again in December, at the G20 summit in Doral, Florida.
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