Source: Radio New Zealand
By Trevor Hunnicutt and Xiuhao Chen
US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping shake hands as they arrive for talks at the Gimhae Air Base on 30 October 2025. AFP / Andrew Caballero-Reynolds
- Soybean futures rally on potential deal announced by Trump
- Trump and Xi look to stabilize relations
- US president may visit Beijing in April
China is considering buying more US-farmed soybeans, President Donald Trump says after what he called “very positive” talks with President Xi Jinping, even as Beijing warned Washington about arms sales to Taiwan.
In a goodwill gesture two months before Trump’s expected visit to Beijing, Trump said Xi would consider hiking soybean purchases from the United States to 20 million tons in the current season, up from 12m tons previously. Soybean futures rallied sharply.
Hours after Xi’s virtual meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Xi and Trump discussed Taiwan and a wide range of trade and security issues that remain a source of tension between the world’s two biggest economies. Both leaders publicly affirmed their personal stake in strong relations after the call, their first since November.
Trump said the call was “all very positive,” that his relationship with Xi is “extremely good” and that “we both realize how important it is to keep it that way.” An official Chinese government account said that Xi had said, “I attach great importance to Sino-U.S. relations.”
Though Trump has tagged China as the reason for several hawkish policy steps from Canada to Greenland and Venezuela, he has eased policy toward Beijing in the past several months in key areas from tariffs to advanced computer chips and drones.
“Both sides are signalling that they want to preserve stability in the US-China relationship,” said Bonnie Glaser, head of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank.
Areas of tension and goodwill gestures
One key area of tension is on Taiwan policy. The United States announced its largest-ever arms sales deal with Taiwan in December, including $11.1 billion in weapons that could ostensibly be used to defend against an attack by China. Taiwan expects more such sales.
China views Taiwan as its own territory, a position Taipei rejects. The United States has formal diplomatic ties with China, but maintains unofficial ties with Taiwan and is the island’s most important arms supplier. The United States is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.
“The United States must carefully handle arms sales to Taiwan,” China said in an official summary of the meeting. The dismissal or investigation into several senior military leaders in China has stirred concern about the implications for Chinese foreign policy. Trump downplayed the investigation into Central Military Commission vice-chairman Zhang Youxia, saying over the weekend that “as far as I’m concerned, there’s one boss in China,” and “that’s President Xi”.
The last nuclear treaty between Russia and the United States is soon to expire, raising the risk of a new arms race in which China would also play a key role with its own growing nuclear stockpile. Trump has said that he wants China to be part of arms control. The Kremlin said it was a topic between Xi and Putin.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about whether arms control had been discussed between Xi and Trump.
Soybeans, airplanes and oil
Economic issues continue to be a flashpoint between the world’s biggest consumer and its biggest factory. Trump has made tariffs on imports a pillar of his strategy to revive domestic manufacturing jobs. US Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday (local time) unveiled plans for a preferential trade bloc of allies for critical minerals, part of an effort to eliminate one key area of leverage that China has over the United States given its control of key metals. But the two sides are working to find areas of accord heading into an expected April state visit by Trump to Beijing. Trump and Xi last met in person in October in South Korea, where a fragile trade truce was struck.
Soybeans are a key issue because struggling US farmers are a major domestic political constituency for Trump, and China is the top consumer. Overseas sales of US soybeans this year slumped to the lowest in 14 years due to trade tensions with China. Benchmark Chicago Board of Trade soybean futures surged more than 3 percent to a two-month high after Trump’s post.
China’s commerce ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the soybean purchases Trump mentioned.
US Representative Ro Khanna, a House of Representatives Democrat who sits on a select committee focused on China, criticized Trump’s effort at dealmaking.
“He points to China’s soybean buying as proof of progress, despite volumes still trailing where they stood before he took office,” Khanna said in a statement. “He says nothing about China’s aggression towards Taiwan, support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or human rights abuses.”
In addition to soybeans, the US and Chinese leaders discussed Iran, Russia’s war in Ukraine, airplane engines and oil and gas, Trump said.
China has been Venezuela’s top oil buyer for years, and the sales helped Caracas repay massive loans to Beijing in debt-for-oil deals. The United States removed President Nicolas Maduro last month, and it has suggested that China will have to buy Venezuelan oil on US terms.
– Reuters
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
