Trump-Xi meeting LIVE: Trumps waited at foot of ladder as Xi, wife got off plane; Chinese President to stay at Waldorf

Trump-Xi Jinping meeting LIVE: The United States should take “extreme caution” over any arms sales to Taiwan, a Chinese defence ministry spokesperson said on Thursday ahead of a summit in Washington between President Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping.

(Reuters)

Trump-Xi Jinping meeting LIVE: China stocks logged their worst day in a month on Thursday as investors remained sceptical that a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington would produce a broader breakthrough.
(Reuters)

China and the US should be “partners, not rivals”, Chinese President Xi Jinping asserted upon arriving in Washington, and he expressed confidence that the two can find a way to get along in the new era.

In a rare gesture, US President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, greeted Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, when they landed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Wednesday.

Trump welcomed Xi at the airport as the US Air Force band marched on the tarmac and the US and Chinese flags flew.

In a written speech upon arrival, Xi extended sincere greetings and best wishes to the US people on behalf of the Chinese people, Xinhua reported.

China and the US are “both great countries, and their peoples are great as well,” Xi said, adding that the two peoples have maintained friendly exchanges for a long time and that their interests are deeply intertwined.

China and the US “should be partners, not rivals,” he said, noting that the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand, and that the two countries can help each other succeed and advance the well-being of the whole world.

US President Donald Trump will host Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the White House on Thursday for a day full of pageantry with one goal — keeping the fragile peace between the rival superpowers.

Trump personally greeted Xi on the tarmac after his arrival on Wednesday, the first time in more than six decades that a US president has welcomed a foreign political leader at Joint Base Andrews near Washington.

He will lay on more pomp and ceremony for Xi on Thursday, treating him to a formal welcome on the White House South Lawn, a military flyover, talks in the Oval Office and finally a grand state banquet.

But the lavish welcome masks deep tensions over thorny topics, including the trade war between the world’s top two economies, artificial intelligence and Beijing’s diplomatic and economic support for Iran.

Xi urged cooperation in comments reported by Chinese state media shortly after his arrival, saying that China and the United States should be “partners rather than rivals.”

The Chinese president added that he was looking “forward to in-depth exchanges with President Trump on major issues concerning our bilateral relations and the global situation.”

Thursday, September 24: Trump-Xi talks and state dinner

Thursday is expected to be the main day of the Trump-Xi summit.

Trump will welcome Xi and Peng at the White House before the two presidents move to the Rose Garden for a military review and begin their bilateral meeting. Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan are expected to attend a separate event in the Washington area.

The talks are expected to cover a broad range of issues, including:

US-China trade and tariffs

Artificial intelligence and technology

Taiwan

Rare-earth minerals

Iran and the Middle East

Russia-Ukraine war

Military-to-military ties

US arms sales to Taiwan

The leaders are also expected to discuss the future of the two countries’ trade relationship. Washington and Beijing are negotiating a reciprocal tariff-reduction framework covering about $30 billion in products from each side, according to the supplied material.

State dinner at the White House

On Thursday evening, Trump and Melania will host Xi and Peng for a state dinner in the East Room of the White House.

The dinner is expected to include prominent technology and business leaders, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Trump and Xi are expected to speak at the beginning of the dinner.

Friday, September 25: Tea, National Archives visit and departure

Xi’s final day in Washington will include a more ceremonial schedule.

Trump and Melania will host Xi and Peng for private tea at the White House. The two presidential couples will then travel to the National Archives in Washington.

They are expected to view historic US founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

After the National Archives visit, Xi and Peng will return to Joint Base Andrews, from where they will depart the United States.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has arrived in Washington to a rare planeside welcome from his US counterpart, Donald Trump.

As Xi walked down a long red carpet on the airport tarmac, a White House spokesperson said that Trump believes Hong Kong democracy advocate Jimmy Lai should be released from prison and “wants to see that happen,” the DPA news agency reported.

“The United States urges the authorities to grant Mr Lai humanitarian parole,” DPA quoted the spokesperson as saying.

Lai, a 78-year-old media tycoon, was sentenced to 20 years in prison earlier in the year under the National Security Law that China imposed in 2020 following massive pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

At a congressional hearing in Washington last week, Lai’s son, Sebastien, repeated his appeal for his father’s release.

Trump raised the issue of Lai’s release when he met Xi in Beijing in May, but the US leader said the Chinese president told him Lai’s case “would be a tough one.”

On Tuesday, the US outlet Politico reported that British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has asked Trump to discuss the release of Lai, a British citizen, with Xi.

US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, will sit down for talks at the White House on Thursday. The meeting will be followed by a high-profile state dinner attended by some of the biggest names in American technology and business.

The dinner, hosted by Trump and First Lady Melania Trump in the White House’s East Room, will be part of Xi’s three-day US visit. Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, would be the guests of honour, the White House said. Read here.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the US and China have sealed a two-month extension to their trade truce, as Xi Jinping landed in America for his first state visit in eleven years.

Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, a celebrated soprano, touched down at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington shortly before 6 p.m. local time on Wednesday. Donald Trump shook hands with the couple, becoming the first US president in six decades to receive a foreign counterpart at that airport, excluding visits by the Pope.

Donald Trump greeted Chinese President Xi Jinping on arrival on Wednesday evening, the first time a US president has welcomed a foreign leader at Joint Base Andrews in 11 years, when President Barack Obama welcomed Pope Francis in 2015, according to C-SPAN, which tracks presidential events.

Taiwan’s government on Thursday thanked the US for its support and said it was maintaining communications ahead of a summit in Washington between President Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping.

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and reiterated on Wednesday that the topic was a “red line” that the US must not cross. The US is Taiwan’s most important international backer and arms supplier, despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties.

Xi is expected to press Trump to halt Taiwan arms ​sales altogether during his visit to Washington, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters. Xi arrived in Washington on Wednesday ahead of the summit on Thursday.

China and Hong Kong stocks extended losses on Thursday as investors remained sceptical that a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington would produce a broader breakthrough.

China’s blue-chip CSI300 Index fell 1.3% by the lunch break, while the Shanghai Composite Index lost roughly 1%.

Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index was down 0.5%.

New Delhi has historically been comfortable with managed competition between the US and China. The Joe Biden administration’s description of China as the “pacing challenge” for US foreign policy raised India’s importance to Washington. In his second term, Trump has kept up some competition with China, particularly on the economic and technological front.

His administration has also largely dropped the framing of China as America’s prime geopolitical threat, including in its 2025 National Security Strategy, and has sought stable ties with Beijing. Trump has publicly warned Taiwan against independence and was lukewarm in backing Japan during a recent confrontation with China over the island.

A more accommodating policy towards China may leave Washington with less need for countries such as India to balance power in Asia, with some observers asking whether New Delhi’s importance to the US has somewhat declined under this administration.

India and others are also wary of Trump’s periodic support for a G2. The idea, much maligned in Washington these days, is that the US and China, as the only two superpowers, get to settle the world’s most pressing problems between them. It could mean America subordinating the concerns of countries such as India, which has a territorial dispute with China, to its need for stable relations with Beijing. Nonetheless, that remains a remote prospect, given the depth of strategic competition and distrust between the two.

“At the central core of China’s perspective of the United States is the deepest possible distrust and the belief in the ultimate malevolence of the United States as a global actor that is the animating feature of your central interlocutors in Beijing more generally and that comes through in some of these discussions,” said Kurt Campbell, former US deputy secretary of state and now chairman of The Asia Group.

India and other Asian nations will watch the summit and its aftermath closely for signs of whether the truce holds, whether the two superpowers achieve substantial breakthroughs that bring more stability and predictability to their ties, or whether the summit falls short of expectations and a more hostile relationship resumes.

“Asian colleagues and senior strategists like their US-China relationship the way they like their morning porridge – not too hot, not too cold. They do not like it when the United States and China veered toward confrontation and public threats. But on the other hand, they probably become equally, but in a different way, unnerved by signs of condominium. That somehow the United States and China will make common cause – in a way, making decisions over the heads of other countries in the Indo-Pacific,” Campbell added.

When Xi Jinping and Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan disembarked from their plane in Washington DC, US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania waited at the foot of the ladder.

Chinese President Xi Jinping rolled through Washington DC in a huge motorcade on Wednesday local time. According to reports, US President Donald Trump went back toward Marine One, while Xi went by car.

Two leaders have prompted two security bubbles, and the US capital is locked down so neither column has to share a road.

As the US and China race to develop more capable AI, discussion of the technology is set to be on the menu on Thursday.

Some of the most notable names in tech, including Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Tim Cook of Apple, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Jensen Huang of Nvidia, are expected to be dining with President Trump and Xi Jinping.

Also set to attend are Jeff Bezos, chairman of Amazon, Elon Musk, boss of Tesla and SpaceX, Sundar Pichai, boss of Google, Michael Dell, of Dell computers, and Jane Fraser, boss of Citi bank, representatives of the White House said.

China’s yuan dipped against the dollar on Thursday, as rising near-term Federal Reserve rate hike expectations drove the greenback higher, while cautious investors awaited the outcome of the Trump-Xi summit in Washington. The US dollar rallied to its highest level in nearly two months overnight as investors’ expectations of a near-term rate hike grew, pushing benchmark ​10-year Treasury yields to their highest since 2007.

On being asked what he will talk about with Chinese President Xi on Iran, US President Donald Trump says, “We’ll see. I’ll be talking about that and many other subjects, but it’s also coming along well, including that.”

Trump-Xi Jinping meeting LIVE: Xi will receive a ceremonial welcome at the White House on Thursday before meeting Trump and attending a black-tie state dinner. On Friday, Xi and Peng are scheduled to have private tea with the Trumps and visit the National Archives.

Trump-Xi Jinping meeting LIVE: Trump and Xi are expected to discuss tariffs, technology, artificial intelligence, military ties and US arms sales to Taiwan. The Russia-Ukraine war, conflicts in the Middle East and the space arms race are also expected to figure in their talks.

Trump-Xi Jinping meeting LIVE: Xi and Peng walked down a 100-foot red carpet as a 21-member honour cordon stood at attention. The US Air Force Band played the US and Chinese national anthems, while ceremonial cannon fire and a flypast by two B-1 bombers marked the arrival.

Trump-Xi Jinping meeting LIVE: US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump welcomed Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan at Joint Base Andrews. It was the first time since 1962 that a US president had welcomed a foreign leader at an airport, when John F Kennedy received British PM Harold Macmillan.

Trump-Xi Jinping meeting LIVE: Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Wednesday for a three-day US visit. It is his second summit with President Donald Trump in less than six months, with trade, technology, AI, Taiwan and global conflicts expected to dominate talks.

Trump-Xi Jinping meeting LIVE: US President Donald Trump said the welcome for Chinese President Xi Jinping was well received, calling Xi and his delegation “tremendous people” after greeting them at a state ceremony in Washington.

Trump-Xi Jinping meeting LIVE: Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday that China and the US should be “partners, not rivals” as he arrived in Washington for a three-day state visit, expressing confidence that the two countries can find the right way to coexist in a new era.

“China and the US are both great countries, and the two peoples are both great peoples,” Xi said in a written speech, according to state-run Xinhua news agency.