Trump again claims Xi told him China won’t act on Taiwan

President Donald J. Trump has repeated his claim that Chinese leader Xi Jinping assured him China would not move militarily against Taiwan while he remains in office.

In a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump on Sunday, he said the U.S. and China “are always watching each other” and described the relationship as a “very competitive world.” “We’re a threat to them, too. Many of the things that you say, we do to them,” he said. He added that Xi “has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, ‘We would never do anything while President Trump is president, because they know the consequences.’”

Trump first made the same assertion during a Fox News interview in August, where he quoted Xi as saying, “I will never do it as long as you’re president.” Beijing publicly denied that account. On “60 Minutes,” Trump again declined to specify how the U.S. would respond to a potential attack on Taiwan, saying only, “You’ll find out if it happens.”

Trump said Taiwan was not discussed during his most recent talks with Xi but maintained that China “understands what’s going to happen” if it acts militarily. He said his relationship with Xi remains stable, adding, “We get along very well at the top.” His comments followed reports from Taiwan’s defense ministry that Chinese aircraft and ships had increased maneuvers around the island just weeks ago.

The president linked deterrence to both diplomatic contact and economic leverage. “I think we can be bigger, better and stronger by working with them as opposed to just knocking them out,” he said. Trump credited U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports for drawing semiconductor companies to invest in domestic manufacturing. “Within two years, we’ll start opening up plants and we’ll have a very substantial portion of the chip market,” he said, calling it part of a strategy to rebuild industrial capacity and maintain an edge over Beijing.

Trump reaffirmed that China remains barred from obtaining the U.S.’ most advanced artificial intelligence chips, including Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell processors. “No. No, we won’t do that… not in terms of the most advanced. The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” he said. He called the restriction vital to keeping the U.S. ahead in the global race for AI dominance.

His comments followed an August policy change in which the White House approved an arrangement allowing Nvidia to resume sales of certain downgraded AI chips to China in exchange for the U.S. government receiving 15% of revenue from those sales. The measure, which Trump defended as a way to “benefit American taxpayers while keeping the most advanced technology at home,” drew criticism from lawmakers who warned that Beijing could still gain valuable computing capabilities.

He also said his administration’s tariffs and export policies ended what he described as China’s “rare earth threat.” “We got… no rare earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone,” Trump said. He added that tariffs had forced Beijing back to the negotiating table, calling them essential to both “national security and great wealth.” He then went on to claim that his government is developing partnerships with Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom to secure independent supplies of critical minerals.