KUALA LUMPUR—President Donald Trump arrives in Malaysia on Sunday for his first visit to Asia since returning to office, a three-nation tour through Malaysia, Japan and South Korea that is expected to culminate in a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, as tensions rise between the world’s two largest economies.
“The first message is Trump the peacemaker. The second is Trump the moneymaker,” said Victor Cha of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And then, of course, with the meeting with China, I think what everyone expects is that there will probably not be a big trade deal, but there will be an effort to de-escalate or put a pause on the situation.”
Trading is expected to dominate the week. On Friday, aboard Air Force One, Trump said he would subsidize American farmers if he didn’t reach a deal with China, and that he planned to discuss the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine with Xi, saying he would like China to “help us.”
The president also suggested he was seeking a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, even as the White House has said no meeting is planned.
“You know, they don’t have much phone service,” Trump said, before urging reporters to “spread the word.”
In Kuala Lumpur, Trump is scheduled to meet with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim before attending a working dinner for leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Malaysia, which chairs ASEAN this year, has set “Inclusivity and sustainability” as the theme of the summit.
The White House said Trump will also participate in a signing ceremony for a peace deal between Cambodia and Thailand, whose deadly border conflict he is credited with helping resolve. During his first term, Trump attended the annual ASEAN summit only once.
Sandwiched between the summit in Kuala Lumpur and South Korea’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, Trump will make an official visit to Japan, his fourth, for talks with new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and an audience with Japanese Emperor Naruhito.
Takaichi, a conservative protégé of the late Shinzo Abe, has pledged to raise defense spending to 2% of GDP by March, two years ahead of schedule, a goal that is likely to draw praise from Trump, who has pressured his allies to spend more. He also floated the idea of reviewing the U.S.-Japan trade deal announced in July.
Trump and Abe forged a close personal relationship during his first term, before Abe’s assassination in 2022. Trump will also meet with business executives and visit US troops while in Japan, a country that hosts more US military personnel than any other in the world.
In South Korea on Wednesday, Trump is scheduled to address business leaders at APEC, hold a bilateral meeting with the president and attend a leaders’ dinner that evening.
Topping the agenda at each stop is trade, and negotiators are still ironing out the details of pacts with South Korea and Japan and taking steps toward deals with China and Malaysia. Delegations from the United States and China will meet in Malaysia over the weekend ahead of Trump’s arrival in Kuala Lumpur.
“It’s not the president of the United States coming to Asia to fulfill the multilateral calendar; it’s the president of the United States coming to Asia and then modifying the multilateral calendar according to his calendar,” Cha said, noting that Trump will skip the US-ASEAN leaders’ meeting, the East Asia Summit and the formal APEC sessions. Still, Cha said regional leaders are eager to participate.
“Everyone still wants to make a deal with the president of the United States,” he said. “Everyone wants a tariff reduction and will try to reach an agreement to achieve it.”
Central to the trip is Trump’s planned meeting with Xi in South Korea on Thursday, although Beijing has not yet confirmed the session. Top U.S. and Chinese officials will meet in Malaysia on Saturday to find a way forward after Trump threatened new 100% tariffs on Chinese goods and other trade limits starting Nov. 1 in response to China’s expanded export controls on rare earth minerals and related technologies.
Trump has said he plans to increase fentanyl, accusing China of failing to stem the flow of precursor chemicals, and a senior administration official said China’s purchases of Russian oil will also be on the table. Trump said he also hopes to talk about Taiwan.
“We have a lot to talk about with President Xi, and he has a lot to talk to us about,” Trump said Friday, adding that he hopes for “a good meeting,” even as he has intermittently threatened to cancel it over trade frictions, including soybean purchases.
Both leaders want the optical and tactical aspect of this meeting to go well, said a person familiar with the meeting’s planning.
Analysts urged caution about what a leader-level meeting can offer. “During Trump’s first term, high-level exchanges with China did not prevent him from taking a tougher line later,” said Sun Chenghao, a fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University. “The symbolic value of summit diplomacy should therefore not be exaggerated.”
Earlier this week, a senior administration official rejected speculation that Trump could repeat his 2019 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, when he made a surprise visit to the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in an effort to revive nuclear talks that had failed. Trump said before leaving Washington on Friday that he would “like” to meet with Kim, but he was unsure if that would happen on this trip.
Kim says he will negotiate only if the United States recognizes North Korea as a nuclear power, and has only further strengthened its weapons programs since Trump’s first term.
“I think they’re kind of a nuclear power,” Trump seemed to acknowledge as he began his trip to Asia on Friday, perhaps paving the way for a possible meeting. “They have a lot of nuclear weapons. I’ll say that.”
