 "Xi, Jinping, Donald, Trump")
The US-China economic relationship and trade will be the key topics of discussions in the much-anticipated meeting between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping today, the White House has said.
"It's fair to say that trade and the economic relationship generally will be a significant topic of discussion between the presidents at the summit," Matt Pottinger, Senior Director for Asia at the National Security Council at the White House told reporters yesterday.
However, he refrained from making any comment on the outcome of the summit.
"The spirit of this summit is for the two to develop a relationship, to really establish a relationship, and to lay out the key concerns that each side has about the relationship and to then begin moving towards some kind of a formal series of dialogues that will aim to address those issues as well as areas of longstanding cooperation between the two sides. I'll leave it at that for the moment," he said.
While the two leaders have talked a few times earlier, this will be the first time that they will meet, he added.
Pottinger said this would be an opportunity for the two leaders to get to know each other and talk about bilateral and regional issues, starting with areas of cooperation, but also various areas of difference in the US-China relationship.
Xi and Trump are scheduled to have a series of meetings at the latter's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, which is now being called the Southern White House.
The meeting comes in the aftermath of the recent Beijing trip of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, which laid the groundwork of the US-China summit.
"They'll have an opportunity to have tea together, meet some of their senior cabinet officials, so to speak, on both sides, and have a dinner," he said.
On Friday, there will be a series of meetings that will go up to and include a working lunch. Those meetings will have a variety of formats, the White House official said.
The two leaders will have some of their respective senior officials with them to cover a lot of ground.
"We'll be talking about, of course, North Korea. We'll be talking about trade and the economic relationship. We'll be talking about maritime issues and a variety of other areas of cooperation and areas where we want to cooperate more closely with China," Pottinger said.
