WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump said he expects to hold trilateral talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen next week.
Speaking to reporters in Florida before boarding his flight back to Washington, Trump laid out an ambitious diplomatic agenda centered on global arms control and active regional conflicts. The gathering of Pacific Rim leaders is scheduled for November 18-19 in the southern Chinese tech hub.
The stakes could hardly be higher.
"One of the meetings, I think, will be with President Putin and President Xi, and that’ll be interesting," Trump said. "We’re talking a lot of things, including denuclearisation, but we’ll be talking a lot of things. We’re trying to end the war in Iran."
Trump previously floated a three-way arms framework in October, pushing for trilateral talks aimed directly at capping nuclear stockpiles across Washington, Beijing, and Moscow. Russian officials have simultaneously pushed to expand any trilateral summit agenda to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, where Moscow seeks territorial concessions.
Trump indicated that negotiations over the Eastern European theater have already advanced, asserting that negotiators are "very close to making a deal" to halt hostilities, though he acknowledged any eventual pact would leave behind a "little bit different shape Ukraine."
Leaders from all three superpowers now turn to Shenzhen, where official bilateral and trilateral scheduling will be finalized ahead of the summit's formal opening on November 18.