KUALA LUMPUR, July 12 – U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday he sees a “high probability” of a summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, but that he did not discuss any specific date with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in their meeting in Malaysia, Kyodo news agency reported.
Rubio said his first face-to-face talks in Kuala Lumpur with Wang were “constructive” despite ongoing tensions between the world’s two largest economies over trade and security.
They met on the fringes of gatherings of Southeast Asian countries and their partners, at a time when the United States and China are seeking to dial down trade tensions, although their competition for influence in the Indo-Pacific region and elsewhere continues.
While U.S.-China geopolitical tensions and technology rivalry are making cooperation between the two countries increasingly difficult, they have backed away from their respective triple-digit tariff rates set after President Donald Trump launched a trade war against Beijing.
With a 90-day truce in the tit-for-tat tariff war in place since May, Trump spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping by phone last month for the first time during the U.S. leader’s nonconsecutive second term.
Earlier this week, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said, “We’re in a pretty good place now. I think we’re going to meet in early August and we’re going to start kicking off a bigger trade conversation between the two largest economies in the world.”
Lutnick said in a CNBC interview that he, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are set to travel together to meet with their Chinese counterparts, without revealing a potential meeting location.
The trio last held a high-level meeting with China in London in June, during which both sides agreed on a framework to ease trade tensions.
