WASHINGTON — President Trump will soon travel to China — likely to talk tariffs and other issues, Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed Friday following a meeting with his counterpart from Beijing.
“President Trump’s been invited to visit China. It’s a visit he wants to undertake, and so we’ll work on finding the right date for that, but I’m sure it’ll happen because the president — both presidents — want it to happen,” Rubio told reporters after his sit-down in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Rubio made the announcement following what he called “a very productive” meeting with China’s foreign minister “to continue to bring stability to our relationship” on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers’ meeting.
In a separate statement, Beijing’s foreign affairs ministry called the meeting between Rubio and Wang “positive, pragmatic and constructive.”
The 47th president slapped China, one of Washington’s top trading partners, with punishing 145% tariffs earlier this year — and has threatened to return to those high rates on Aug. 10 if a deal can’t be worked out beforehand to reduce trade disparities.
The US and China declared a trade truce last month, with America placing 55% duties on Chinese imports — the sum of Trump’s global 10% baseline tariff, a 20% fentanyl-related rate and a pre-existing 25% rate.
Terms of a broader agreement have yet to be worked out. Beijing has threatened to put 125% tariffs back on US exports if no deal is reached.
“For 20 or 30 years, the United States has built up enormous trade deficits with multiple countries around the world, in every region — in Europe, Canada, Mexico, and in this region as well — and that had to be addressed. And so that’s what the president is doing,” said Rubio, who added that trade was not the focus of his meeting with Wang.
“Particularly in Southeast Asia,” he went on, “two-thirds of global economic growth is going to happen here over the next 25 or 30 years, and much of that is going to be on digital platforms.
“Those platforms have to be secure. They have to be secure from cyber criminals. They have to be secure from nation-state actors that may seek to undermine it,” he added.
“So that was a recurring theme in all of our engagements, and everyone is very enthusiastic to work together on these things.”
Rubio also inked a civil nuclear partnership with Malaysia during the gathering.
The US-China session came one day after Rubio sat down with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to discuss in what the secretary called “a new and a different approach” to peace negotiations to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
More than 100,000 Russian troops have been killed so far in 2025 alone, Rubio disclosed, but Vladimir Putin has shown no sign of wanting to wind down his war machine, frustrating Trump.
“A lot of people are dying and it should end,” he complained to reporters during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. “We get a lot of bulls–t thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
US officials have also expressed concern about China potentially assisting Russia in rebuilding some of its depleted military industrial sector.
“I think the Chinese clearly have been supportive of the Russian effort,” Rubio said Friday. “They’ve been willing to help them as much as they can without getting caught.”
