The visit would be the leaders’ first in-person talks since an October meeting in South Korea, where they agreed on the trade truce.
While the October meeting largely sidestepped the sensitive issue of Taiwan, Xi raised U.S. arms sales to the island when the two leaders spoke this month.
Washington announced its largest-ever arms sale approval with Taiwan in December, including $11.1 billion in weapons that could ostensibly be used to defend against a Chinese attack. Taiwan expects more such sales.
China views Taiwan as its own territory, a position Taipei rejects. The U.S., bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, has formal diplomatic ties with China, but it maintains unofficial ties with Taiwan and is the island’s most important arms supplier.
Xi also said during the February call that he would consider further increasing soybean purchases, according to Trump. Struggling U.S. farmers are a major political constituency for Trump, and China is the top soybean consumer.
Although Trump has justified several hawkish policy steps from Canada to Greenland and Venezuela as necessary to thwart China, he has eased policy toward Beijing in the past several months in areas from tariffs to advanced computer chips and drones.
The global trade war Trump initiated after he began his second term as president in January 2025 has alienated other trading partners, including allies.
Critics had argued that imposing steep tariffs on countries across the board actually insulated Beijing from the tariff barrage and reduced incentives to move supply chains out of China.
Friday’s ruling could indirectly increase pressure on Beijing if the effective tariff rates on other countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, fall more than on China, said Martin Chorzempa, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics.
“Unlike with many other countries, there is a well-established, much more legally durable mechanism for most of the tariffs on China that make them less affected than those on other countries,” Chorzempa said.
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