President Trump said the issues of Taiwan, Russian oil and Nvidia’s advanced Blackwell chip weren’t raised during his wide-ranging meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday.
“Taiwan never came up. It was not discussed actually,” Trump said when asked by reporters on Air Force One.
However, the president noted that Russia’s war in Ukraine came up “very strongly” during the meeting.
“We’re both going to work together to see if we can get something done,” Trump said. “We agree that the sides are locked in, fighting, and sometimes you have to let them fight, I guess. Crazy. But he’s going to help us and we’re going to work together on Ukraine.”
When asked about China’s history of purchasing Russian oil, Trump said, “we really didn’t discuss the oil” talking instead about trying to end the war.
“He’s been buying oil from Russia for a long time. It takes care of a big part of China,” Trump told reporters.
Many view the war between Russia and Ukraine as parallel to Taiwan’s relationship with China, given tensions over territorial sovereignty between Beijing and Taipei. Xi sees Taiwan as Chinese sovereign territory and has vowed to reunify the two countries, by force if necessary.
The U.S. has maintained unofficial ties with Taiwan.
Trump did not give a definitive answer over whether Taiwan would be brought up during trade negotiations with China.
“I don’t know that we’ll even speak about Taiwan. I’m not sure he may want to ask about it,” The president said.
Another issue that Trump said did not come up with Xi was approving the sale of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips to China.
“We’re not talking about the Blackwell. That just came out yesterday,” the president said.
Trump did say he discussed the issue of chips, generally, with Xi.
“[China is] going to be talking to Nvidia and others about taking chips.”
