President Donald Trump will meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in China next week for an unprecedented three-way summit, the White House said. The meeting will take place on Thursday in Shenzhen, on the sidelines of the president’s Asia trip.
White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said the president will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons, among other topics. A senior U.S. official said the administration does not expect any agreement and cast the session as a first conversation on cutting nuclear arsenals.
The senior U.S. official said China has the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal among the three powers and that it was time for Beijing to step up on the issue. The trilateral will gather the leaders of the world’s three largest nuclear powers nine months after the expiry of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, the last deal limiting U.S. and Russian strategic arsenals. Trump has called for a broader pact that includes China. Beijing has resisted joining arms-control negotiations, according to previous statements.
The senior U.S. official said Trump also intends to discuss the continuing war in Iran with Xi and Putin, without offering details on possible outcomes. The official said they did not expect Trump to discuss Ukraine at the trilateral meeting, despite Putin’s earlier proposal to use such a forum to plan an end to the conflict.
How the meeting came about
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Putin floated a trilateral in a phone call with Trump last month. Trump has said he was open to the idea but wanted to discuss denuclearisation. After Trump’s summit with Xi in September, the White House said he had called for “trilateral arms control negotiations,” which China did not mention in its readout.
What is on Trump’s Asia schedule
Trump will depart for Asia on Monday. He is scheduled to stop in Manila on Tuesday to meet leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations before travelling to China’s tech hub of Shenzhen for meetings with Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders. Wales said Trump will also hold a bilateral with Xi in China. It will be the fourth time Trump has met Xi in just over a year. Trump has said they will meet again at the Group of 20 summit in Miami next month.
Who else is involved
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, will accompany Trump for parts of the China visit, the senior U.S. official said.
The official said Musk is not expected to join the trilateral meeting. Musk previously flew with Trump to China on Air Force One earlier this year.
What is not on the agenda
The senior U.S. official said there is no bilateral meeting scheduled between Trump and Putin. Ukrainian officials had voiced alarm at the prospect of Ukraine being discussed without Kyiv present. “Inviting Putin to such a meeting would feed his appetite for self-aggrandizement and give him a stature he does not deserve,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said last month, arguing such a meeting would only “encourage Putin to continue this war.”
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