OSAKA, Japan -- The U.S. and China agreed to a truce Saturday in their yearlong trade war as President Donald Trump said he would hold off on imposing tariffs for $300 billion in Chinese goods.
The two nations agreed to restart stalled talks that have already gone 11 rounds, averting for now an escalation feared by financial markets, businesses and farmers.
"We're going to work with China where we left off," Trump said after a lengthy meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Osaka, where the leaders were attending the Group of 20 summit.
While Trump said relations with China were "right back on track," doubts persist about the two nations' willingness to compromise on a long-term solution. Saturday was not the first time Trump and Xi have professed their friendship and paused the escalation of protectionist measures.
Among the sticking points of the talks is that the U.S. says China steals technology and coerces foreign companies into handing over trade secrets. China denies it engages in such practices.
The United States has imposed 25% import taxes on $250 billion in Chinese products. Had the U.S. targeted the additional $300 billion of products, it would have extended the tariffs to virtually everything China ships to America.
China has countered with tariffs on $110 billion in American goods, focusing on agricultural products.
Some progress seemed to be made in a dispute involving the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, which the Trump administration has branded a national security threat and barred from buying American technology. Trump said Saturday that he would allow U.S. companies to do business with Huawei, but he was not yet willing to remove the company from a trade blacklist.
"U.S. companies can sell their equipment to Huawei," Trump said. "We're talking about equipment where there's no great national security problem with it."
In exchange, he said, China agreed to buy a "tremendous amount" of American food and agricultural products.
"We will give them a list of things we want them to buy," Trump said.
The meeting between the two leaders was the centerpiece of four days of diplomacy in Asia for Trump, who said the talks with Xi went "probably even better than expected."
OVERTURE TO N. KOREA
Even as he returned to the negotiating table with China, Trump pursued a surprise initiative to draw North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, back into talks as well.
Trump early this morning said he believes Kim wants to meet for a handshake today at the Demilitarized Zone separating the North and South. The president even expressed a willingness to cross the border into North Korea for what would be a history-making photo opportunity. Trump left Japan for Seoul, South Korea, late Saturday.
Speaking during a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Trump said, "Chairman Kim wants to do it, I'd like to do it." He had told Korean business leaders earlier that any meeting with Kim would be "very short."
"Virtually a handshake, but that's OK," Trump said. "A handshake means a lot."
Moon said Trump's suggestion of a brief meeting with Kim represented "a significant milestone" and a "big hope to the Korean people," adding that he could "really feel that the flower of peace was truly blossoming on the Korean Peninsula."
The White House's official schedule for Trump today in South Korea didn't list a meeting with Kim at the border and allows little time for it.
But officials were working out the details, Trump said. "It's very complicated from the standpoint of logistics and security," he said.
Trump's daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, has been accompanying the president on his trip. She said she would "absolutely" enter North Korea with her father today if he goes.
"If I was invited, I would," she said, calling the possibility of her father entering the country "a very meaningful moment."
Presidential visits to the DMZ are traditionally carefully guarded secrets for security reasons.
North Korea's first vice foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, said the meeting with Trump, if realized, would serve as "another meaningful occasion in further deepening the personal relations between the two leaders and advancing the bilateral relations."
Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to meet with the leader of the isolated nation last year, when they signed an agreement in Singapore for guiding the North toward denuclearization. However, North Korea has balked at Trump's insistence that it give up its weapons before it sees relief from crushing international sanctions.
OTHER MEETINGS
In addition to meeting with Xi on Saturday, Trump talked with two other world leaders who have been accused of having authoritarian tendencies.
After meeting with Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman, Trump referred to the crown prince as his "friend" and suggested he was satisfied with the steps that the kingdom was taking to prosecute some of those accused of being involved with last year's murder of Washington Post columnist and American resident Jamal Khashoggi.
"A lot of people are being prosecuted, and they're taking it very seriously there," the president said.
He also asserted that Crown Prince Mohammed was upset over the murder of Khashoggi, who was a vocal critic of the future king's leadership. "He's very angry about it," Trump said. "He's very unhappy about it."
The president also said that "nobody so far has pointed directly a finger" at the crown prince as being involved in the killing. U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed must have at least known of the plot.
Trump also met with Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an ostensible NATO ally whom the U.S. sees as drifting dangerously toward Russia's sphere of influence.
Trump said the two will "look at different solutions" to Turkey's planned purchase of the Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile system.
He blamed President Barack Obama's administration for not agreeing to sell U.S.-made Patriot missile batteries to Turkey, saying that drove Erdogan to buy from Russia. U.S. officials have threatened to halt the sale of U.S.-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to Turkey if the purchase of Russian missiles goes through.
"The greatest fighter jet in the world," Trump said of the F-35. "It's stealth -- you can't see it. It's hard to beat something when you can't see it. He bought 100. He has options for more. Now he wants delivery ... and now they're saying he's using the S-400 system, which is incompatible with our system, and if you use the S-400 system, Russia and other people can gain access into the genius of the F-35."
Trump said the problem with halting the sale is that Erdogan has already paid for the U.S. fighter jets.
"So it's a mess. It's a mess," Trump said. "Honestly, it's not really Erdogan's fault."
On Friday, Trump also met with Russia's Vladimir Putin and jokingly told him, "Don't meddle with the election." Pressed Saturday on whether he pushed the issue of Russian interference in U.S. elections more seriously in private, Trump said he had raised it with Putin, adding: "You know he denies it, totally. How many times can you get someone to deny something?"
Putin told reporters Saturday that "we talked about it," but he did not elaborate. Putin said he believes it's necessary to "turn the page" in relations with the U.S., which have plunged to the lowest level since the Cold War.
Separately on Saturday, Trump said that he had told the summit's host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, that the 68-year-old Japanese-American defense treaty was unfair to the United States and should be overhauled.
"I said, look, if somebody attacks Japan, we go after them, and ... we're locked in a battle and committed to fight for Japan," Trump said. "If somebody should attack the United States, [Japan doesn't] have to do that. That's unfair. That's the kind of deals we've made. Every deal is like that. I mean, it's almost like we had people that either they didn't care or were stupid."
Trump said that if someone attacks the United States, Japan is "going to have to help us. [Abe] knows that. He has no problem with that."
Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Lemire, Zeke Miller, Patrick Quinn, Paul Wiseman, Kelvin Chan, Darlene Superville, Jill Colvin, Hyung-jin Kim, Kim Tong-hyung, Fu Ting, Josh Boak, Joe McDonald and Sam McNeil of The Associated Press; by Shawn Donnan, Miao Han, Margaret Talev, Nick Wadhams, Jennifer Jacobs and Peter Martin of Bloomberg News; and by Peter Baker and Keith Bradsher of The New York Times.
A Section on 06/30/2019