President Donald Trump will meet China’s Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin Nov. 19 on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a White House spokeswoman said.
Xi is hosting this year’s APEC summit, which is set to take place on Nov. 18-19 in Shenzhen, China.
Trump has previously said such a trilateral meeting would focus on denuclearization, an unlikely prospect given China’s reluctance to discuss limits on nuclear stockpiles with Russia and the US, both of which have much larger arsenals.
The meeting between the three also comes as Trump seeks a path forward to end the war in Ukraine, which has persisted for more than four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.
Though Trump intends to discuss the war in Iran with Putin and Xi, he is not expected to bring up Ukraine, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity in order to discuss plans for the trip. Trump and Putin are not expected to hold separate bilateral talks, the official added.
The president’s trip abroad comes after he a political setback at home in the Nov. 3 midterm elections, where rival Democrats swept to control of the US House and Senate. He’ll meet with leaders of the Quad — India, Japan and Australia, plus the US — in Manila, where he’ll also sign a trade deal with Thailand and attend the ASEAN summit hosted by the Philippines.
The president will then travel to Shenzhen, where he’s set to meet with both Putin and Xi, as well as hold his third of four planned one-on-one meetings with the Chinese leader this year.
Trump and Xi’s meeting comes as the White House is grappling with the fallout over revelations that former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had an extramarital affair with the CEO of Megapseed, Alice Huang, who U.S. intelligence suspects is a Chinese spy.
The episode has raised fresh questions about whether the Trump administration ignored warnings that the then-Nvidia chief had been compromised and held off on placing restrictions on the company’s chip exports. Senior administration officials played down the Nvidia scandal, suggesting it would not have any bearing on the trip and the president had no plans to raise it with Xi.
The president also has no plans to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, which he expressed a desire to do earlier this year, a second official told reporters.
As leaders of the world’s two largest economies, Trump and Xi will navigate a number of challenges, including trade and tariffs, the race to develop artificial intelligence, as well as global flashpoints such as Taiwan and the US war on Iran.
The pair met last met in September, when the US president feted the Chinese leader at the White House with elaborate pomp, including a lavish state dinner. The two leaders in September did not announce any major breakthrough, but managed to keep ties steady following the tumult earlier in Trump’s second term, when a trade war rattled financial markets.
The biggest announcement from the fall meeting was a decision to extend a trade truce until January 2027, though that was agreed to even before the state visit officially began.
Trump during their Washington summit repeatedly cast Xi, the leader of a major geopolitical rival, as a friend, papering over more contentious issues dividing their countries, such as the Iran war and Taiwan, the self-governing island Beijing claims as its own.
The Iran war, which the US and Israel launched in late February, and subsequent efforts to economically isolate Tehran have tested ties between Washington and Beijing. China was Iran’s second-largest trading partner in 2025 and a major purchaser of oil from the Islamic Republic. Chinese refiners have been forced to turn to alternative sources as Iranian crude flows have been choked off by a US naval blockade.
Trump has also repeatedly mused about the prospect of China selling arms to Iran, saying he would be disappointed if Beijing did so and adding that Xi had assured him they would not.
The two leaders are expected to meet again at the Group of 20 summit in Doral, Florida, in December.
This report is auto generated from the Bloomberg news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.