��������

BUSAN, South Korea: President Donald Trump is set to meet face-to-face with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday, a chance for the leaders of the world’s two largest economies to stabilize relations after months of turmoil over trade issues.
Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs since returning to the White House for a second term combined with China’s retaliatory limits on exports of rare earth elements have given the meeting newfound urgency. There is a mutual recognition that neither side wants to risk blowing up the world economy in ways that could jeopardize their own country’s fortunes.
In the days leading up to the meeting, US officials have signaled that Trump does not intend to make good on a recent threat to impose an additional 100 percent import tax on Chinese goods — and China has shown signs it is willing to relax its export controls on rare earths and also buy soybeans from America.
Trump went further aboard Air Force One on his way to South Korea, telling reporters he may reduce tariffs that he placed on China earlier this year related to its role in making fentanyl.
“I expect to be lowering that because I believe that they’re going to help us with the fentanyl situation,” Trump said, later adding, “The relationship with China is very good.”
Shortly before the meeting on Thursday, Trump posted on Truth Social that the meeting would be the “G2,” a recognition of America and China’s status as the world’s biggest economies. The Group of Seven and Group of 20 are other forums of industrialized nations.
The meeting is set to begin at 11 a.m. (10 p.m. ET) in Busan, South Korea, a port city about 76 kilometers (47 miles) south from Gyeongju, the main venue for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
At a dinner on Wednesday night with other APEC leaders, Trump was caught on a microphone saying the meeting with Xi would be “three, four hours” and he would then go home to Washington.
Officials from both countries met earlier this week in Kuala Lumpur to lay the groundwork for their leaders. Afterward, China’s top trade negotiator Li Chenggang said they had reached a “preliminary consensus,” a statement affirmed by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who said there was ” a very successful framework.”
The anticipated detente has given investors and businesses caught between the two nations a sense of relief. The US stock market has climbed on the hopes of a trade framework coming out of the meeting.
However cordial the rhetoric, Trump and Xi remain on a potential collision course as their countries vie to dominate manufacturing, develop emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and shape world affairs such as the status of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Trump indicated that he did not plan to bring up issues such as the security of Taiwan with Xi.
“The proposed deal on the table fits the pattern we’ve seen all year: short-term stabilization dressed up as strategic progress,” said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Both sides are managing volatility, calibrating just enough cooperation to avert crisis while the deeper rivalry endures.”
The US and China have each shown they believe they have levers to pressure the other, and the past year has demonstrated that tentative steps forward can be short-lived.
For Trump, that pressure comes from tariffs.
Right now, China had faced new tariffs this year totaling 30 percent, of which 20 percent has been tied to its role in fentanyl production. But the tariff rates have been volatile. In April, he announced plans to jack the rate on Chinese goods to 145 percent, only to abandon those plans as markets recoiled.
Then, on Oct. 10, Trump threatened a 100 percent import tax because of China’s rare earth restrictions.
Xi has his own chokehold on the world economy because China is the top producer and processor of the rare earth minerals needed to make fighter jets, robots, electric vehicles and other high-tech products.
China had tightened export restrictions on Oct. 9, repeating a cycle in which each nation jockeys for an edge only to back down after more trade talks.
What might also matter is what happens directly after their talks. Trump plans to return to Washington, while Xi plans to stay on in South Korea to meet with regional leaders during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which officially begins on Friday.
“Xi sees an opportunity to position China as a reliable partner and bolster bilateral and multilateral relations with countries frustrated by the US administration’s tariff policy,” said Jay Truesdale, a former State Department official who is CEO of TD International, a risk and intelligence advisory firm.

US President Donald Trump, ahead of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, said he has instructed the Department of Defense to immediately resume testing nuclear weapons on an “equal basis” with other nuclear powers.
“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately,” Trump said on Truth Social, ahead of the meeting with Xi in South Korea.
“Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years,” Trump noted.
President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday Russia had successfully tested a Poseidon nuclear-powered super torpedo that military analysts say is capable of devastating coastal regions by triggering vast radioactive ocean swells.

As Trump has toughened both his rhetoric and his stance on Russia, Putin has publicly flexed his nuclear muscles with the test of a new Burevestnik cruise missile on October 21 and nuclear launch drills on October 22.
The United States last tested a nuclear weapon in 1992.
Tests provide evidence of what any new nuclear weapon will do — and whether older weapons still work.
Apart from providing technical data, such a test would be seen in Russia and China as a deliberate assertion of US strategic power.

The United States opened the nuclear era in July 1945 with the test of a 20-kiloton atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico, and then dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to end World War Two. 

According to the , more than 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out all over the world from 1945 until 1996, when the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened for signature.
Since then, only 10 nuclear tests had been conducted, two each by rival neighbors India and Pakistan in 1998, and the rest by North Korea in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016, and 2017.