Trump, Xi and Putin to Meet in China

Featured image: Official inaugural portrait of President Donald Trump, January 2025 (file photo). Photo: Daniel Torok, U.S. government work, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The White House said Friday, Nov. 13, that President Donald Trump will hold a three-way meeting with China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Thursday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen — the first meeting of its kind among the three leaders, according to U.S. officials.

Thursday

Planned date of the trilateral meeting in Shenzhen, after a Trump-Xi working lunch, the White House said

Nuclear arms

White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said Trump will discuss reducing nuclear weapons, which he calls a dangerous proliferation risk

Iran, not Ukraine

A senior U.S. official said Trump intends to raise the Iran war but not Russia’s war in Ukraine at the three-way session

No deal expected

The same official described the talks as a first conversation at the leader level and said Washington does not expect an agreement

Key points from White House assistant press secretary Olivia Wales and senior U.S. officials, as reported Friday by the Associated Press, the BBC, Anadolu Agency, Channel News Asia and Arab News, which published Associated Press and Agence France-Presse reporting.

Assistant Press Secretary Olivia Wales told reporters on a call that Trump “will conclude his visit to China with a trilateral meeting between the president of the United States, the president of the People’s Republic of China, and the president of the Russian Federation.” The meeting is scheduled for Thursday in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese city hosting this year’s APEC gathering.

“The president has made it clear that, among other topics, he will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world, whose proliferation President Trump believes is very dangerous,” Wales said, according to the BBC and Anadolu Agency.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters that Washington does not expect an agreement to come out of the session. “I would characterize this as the entry point, the first conversation, certainly at the leader level between these countries,” the official said, according to Anadolu Agency.

Iran is on the agenda; Ukraine is not, U.S. officials say

“I think the president does intend to talk about Iran in the trilateral meeting with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin,” a senior U.S. official said, according to Channel News Asia, Arab News and the Kyiv Independent, which cited Associated Press reporting. The official said Washington has a “whole other track” of talks with Kyiv and Moscow aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, a reference to meetings this week in which U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner saw Putin in Moscow and then briefed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Dublin.

“China is not really a part of that track, so it doesn’t seem appropriate to have the Ukraine discussion there,” the official said, according to those outlets.

That U.S. description differs from comments Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov made on Nov. 12. Speaking to Russian state media, Ushakov said that during a planned meeting with Trump at the Shenzhen summit, “we will continue to discuss the full range of issues related to the settlement,” the Kyiv Independent reported. Unverified claim, Russian state media (Russian government) The Kyiv Independent also reported that Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha had said such a summit would only “encourage Putin to continue this war.” Zelensky has expressed concern that a three-way meeting could become a venue for discussing Ukraine’s future without Kyiv, Arab News reported. The Boston Report has not independently confirmed Ushakov’s remarks from the original Russian broadcast.

The planned discussion of the Iran war comes a day after Trump said he had pulled Vice President JD Vance off Iran talks and that the United States does not need an Iran deal, a directive The Boston Report reported on Thursday.

What the data shows: three arsenals, far from equal

The United States, Russia and China hold the world’s three largest nuclear arsenals, but they are not close in size. The Federation of American Scientists, in its 2026 Status of World Nuclear Forces, estimated that at the beginning of 2026 Russia had a military stockpile of 4,400 warheads and a total inventory of 5,420, including retired warheads awaiting dismantlement. The United States had an estimated military stockpile of 3,700 and a total inventory of 5,042. China had an estimated 620 warheads in both categories.

Bar chart comparing estimated military stockpiles and total nuclear warhead inventories for Russia, the United States and China at the beginning of 2026, using Federation of American Scientists figures — Source: Federation of American Scientists, Status of World Nuclear Forces, 2026, estimates as of the beginning of 2026; chart: The Boston Report. Military stockpile figures count warheads in military custody for use by forces; total inventory also includes retired but still intact warheads awaiting dismantlement. The estimates carry significant uncertainty, the authors say, because most nuclear-armed states do not publish official totals.

Combined, the U.S. and Russian total inventories account for about 86% of the roughly 12,187 warheads FAS estimated worldwide at the start of 2026, matching the share FAS itself reported. China’s 620 warheads are about 6.4% of the estimated global military stockpile of 9,745, a The Boston Report calculation from the FAS table. China’s estimated military stockpile is about one-sixth the size of the U.S. military stockpile, also a The Boston Report calculation from those figures (3,700 divided by 620).

The last major U.S.-Russian nuclear arms pact, New START, expired in February 2026, the BBC, Arab News and FAS reported, ending agreed caps on the two largest arsenals. The BBC said Trump rejected a Russian call to extend the treaty for a year and has said he wants “a new, improved and modernized” deal that includes China. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that “in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile,” the Kyiv Independent reported.

A senior U.S. official said China’s arsenal is “growing by far the fastest in the world” and argued it was time for Beijing to “step up to the adult table,” according to Anadolu Agency. FAS, citing a 2022 U.S. Defense Department assessment, has reported the Pentagon’s claim that China could have about 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030, while noting that such projections depend on uncertain factors.

The rest of Trump’s Asia trip, as the White House described it

Wales said Trump will leave Washington on Monday, attend a Quad leaders’ meeting and a U.S.-ASEAN special summit in Manila on Tuesday, and also sign a trade agreement with Thailand and take part in a welcome ceremony with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., according to Anadolu Agency. Trump is then due in Shenzhen on Wednesday for the APEC meetings, with a bilateral working lunch and meeting with Xi on Thursday before the trilateral session. The BBC, citing Wales, said the Trump-Xi meeting would be their fourth since Trump returned to office in 2025. U.S. officials said Trump is not scheduled to have a separate one-on-one meeting with Putin, Channel News Asia and Arab News reported.

A second senior U.S. official described the Trump-Xi session as “an implementation check-in, a stocktaking” of a trade agreement and said no announcement on tariff changes was expected, according to Anadolu Agency. On rare earths, the official said Washington is “not getting them at the pace and at the level that we would like,” and that this was why “the Busan agreement had been extended for two months rather than six,” Anadolu Agency reported. Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk will accompany Trump on parts of the China visit but will not take part in the meeting with Xi and Putin, U.S. officials told those outlets. Officials also said Jensen Huang’s resignation from Nvidia, and U.S. export controls on chips, were not expected to come up. “We do not negotiate American export controls,” a senior official said, according to Channel News Asia.

The BBC, in its Friday report, said Moscow and Beijing had yet to comment on the White House announcement, and that Chinese state media had reported Xi would hold “bilateral” talks on the APEC sidelines but had not reported the trilateral meeting. Earlier this month, the BBC said, Russian state news agency TASS reported that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said there were “signals confirming readiness” for such talks at the summit. Unverified claim, TASS (Russian state media)

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Trump, Xi and Putin to Hold First Three-Way Meeting Next Week in China