President Donald Trump greets Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Gimhae International Airport terminal onOctober 30, 2025, in Busan, South Korea. The White House said Wednesday that the two leaders will meet in Beijing mid-May. File Photo by Daniel Torok/The White House/UPI | License Photo
President Donald Trump’s long-awaited meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing has been rescheduled for mid-May, according to the White House.
The two leaders were originally scheduled to meet Tuesday through April 2, but it was postponed a little over a week ago by Trump, who said he needed to remain in the United States because of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.
During a press conference Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing is scheduled for May 14 and 15. She also announced that Trump and first lady Melania Trump will host Xi and his wife, Madame Peng Liyuan, for what she said was a reciprocal visit to Washington that is to be announced at a later date.
“President Xi understood that it’s very important for the president to be here throughout these combat operations right now,” she said. “He understood, obviously, the request to postpone and accepted it, which is why we have new dates on the books and I’m happy to announce those to you today.”
Trump confirmed the rescheduled trip to Beijing and the visit by Xi and Peng in a statement on his Truth Social platform, stating preparations for “these Historic Visits” were being finalized.
“I look very much forward to spending time with President Xi in what will be, I am sure, a Monumental Event,” he said.
The meeting was first announced last month following a combative first year of Trump’s second term in office between the world’s two largest economies due to a fierce trade war kicked off by sweeping and steep tariffs imposed on Beijing exports by Trump.
An agreement reached in Geneva in May later expanded in Busan late October helped de-escalate the trade war, though tensions remain.
Following the start of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran on Feb. 28 and Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, Trump threatened to postpone his trip to China unless it committed military assets to keep tanker traffic moving down the all-important shipping lane, through which flows about 20% of the world’s oil.
He then told reporters March 16 that they requested the meeting be postponed a month because he is required in the United States due to the war.
“I’m looking forward to being with them. We have a very good relationship, but because of the war — there’s no tricks to it either,” he said. “It’s very simple. We got a war going on. I think it’s important that I be here. So it could be that we delay it a little bit. Not much.”
Asked Wednesday whether the new schedule suggested the conflict will have wound down by the time of the Beijing trip, Leavitt, who previously said the war would be over in four to six weeks, said: “You can do that math on that.”
“But I know the president looks forward to going to China on May 14 and 15,” she said.
The trip will be the first to China by a sitting U.S. president since November 2017, when Trump visited Beijing for three days.
