Trump says he’ll visit Beijing in April after ‘very good’ call with China’s Xi

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Trump last visited China in the first year of his first term and says Xi will, in turn, be headed to the US for a state visit later in 2026

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President Donald Trump said he would visit Beijing this coming April and host Chinese president Xi Jinping for a state visit to Washington later in 2026 after what he described as a wide-ranging call with Xi on Monday.

Writing on Truth Social, the president stated that he and Xi had concluded what he called a “very good telephone call” that largely followed up on discussions they’d had during a face-to-face meeting in South Korea three weeks ago.

Trump said the Monday morning call with Xi focused on “many topics” including “Ukraine/Russia, Fentanyl, Soybeans and other Farm Products, etc” and claimed he and Xi had made “good, and very important, deal for our Great Farmers” that would “only get better” while describing the U.S.-China relationship as “extremely strong.”

Trump also claimed there had been “significant progress” on “both sides” with regards to keeping agreements the two leaders had struck in South Korea to deescalate the trade war which the U.S. president had stoked since returning to office in January.

Those agreements had included a commitment on China’s part to purchase American farm products and ensure that rare earth elements used in numerous technology sectors be made available to American purchasers.

In return, Trump agreed to half a 20 -ercent tariff hike imposed in retaliation for what he described as China's role in producing fentanyl and chemicals used to make it to 10 percent while keeping other tariffs in place and continuing talks to deescalate the trade war.

The president said those agreements were being kept “current and accurate” by both sides, allowing the leaders to “set our sights on the big picture.”

“To that end, President Xi invited me to visit Beijing in April, which I accepted, and I reciprocated where he will be my guest for a State Visit in the U.S. later in the year. We agreed that it is important that we communicate often, which I look forward to doing,” he added.

The planned April visit to Beijing by the U.S. president will be his second state visit to China.

During his first term, he traveled there from November 8 to November 10, 2017. While in China, he became the first foreign leader to dine in the Forbidden City.

Xi’s planned reciprocal visit to Washington at a later point in 2026 would mark his second state visit to the United States. It would come more than a decade after then-president Barack Obama hosted him for six days of events in September 2015, nearly three years after he succeeded Hu Jintao as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China.

The Chinese leader last visited the United States in November 2023 for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative summit in San Francisco.

While there, he also met with then-president Joe Biden for a four-hour meeting that Biden later described as having been “candid and constructive.”

At the time, Biden and Xi agreed to to resume lines of communication between their respective countries’ defense departments, including consultations and exchanges at operational levels, which had been severed during months of tensions which started after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022 and escalated further after the U.S. Air Force shot down a Chinese spy balloon in February 2023.

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