Trump Meets Xi and Putin in Trilateral Summit on Sidelines of APEC in Shenzhen

US President Donald Trump is holding a trilateral summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the APEC summit in the Chinese city of Shenzhen next week, according to an announcement by White House deputy spokesperson Olivia Wales.

Wales explained that Trump will also hold a bilateral conversation with Xi Jinping on Thursday afternoon, noting that the president stated explicitly that he will address "the issue of reducing nuclear weapons in the world," and Wales added that this issue is extremely dangerous should it spread.

For his part, a senior US official who declined to disclose his identity stressed that Washington "does not expect any agreement" to come out of these meetings, describing the meeting as "a starting point, that is, the first leaders-level meeting between these countries." The same official added that China now possesses "a nuclear arsenal that is the fastest growing in the world by a wide margin," affirming that the time has come for Beijing to sit "at the table of the big powers."

The official revealed that Trump intends to raise the Iranian file at the trilateral meeting, although the Ukraine file is "absent from the agenda."

In the same context, Trump's visit to the Philippines includes participation in the Quad summit in Manila to discuss peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as signing a trade agreement with Thailand and attending the special ASEAN-US summit. The visit also includes concluding trade and investment deals in the aviation, defense, energy and technology sectors with Manila in a way that supports American jobs, according to what White House sources stated.