Trump, Putin and Xi to hold historic trilateral meeting at APEC Summit in China

US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold a trilateral meeting on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in Shenzhen next week, White House confirmed on Friday. This is the first trilateral meeting between the leaders of the US, Russia and China. Trump will leave Washington on Monday and arrive in the Philippines on Tuesday for a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) before heading to Shenzhen.

“The President has made it clear that, among other topics, he will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world. This proliferation, President Trump believes, is very dangerous,” Olivia Wales, a White House spokesman, told reporters. He is also likely to discuss US war in Iran but is not expected to discuss Russia's war in Ukraine.

The discussion between the US and Russia on ending the war in Iran is completely different, according to a US official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "China is not really a part of that track, so it doesn't seem appropriate to have the Ukraine discussion there," said the official.

Trump will also hold a bilateral working lunch and meeting with the Chinese president on Thursday -- their fourth meeting since the US president's return to power last year. But a Trump-Putin bilateral meeting is not being considered.

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Jensen Huang and Nvidia scandal

The APEC Summit is coming just after a week of the Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's affair scandal. However, according to AFP, Huang is unlikely to feature in the conversations. The broader narrative pushed in the whole spy scandal is the US export control of chips, which is also unlikely to feature in the conversation between the US and Chinese leaders.

"We do not negotiate American export controls. These are national security matters that we develop in the administration... and we don't expect it to figure at all in any of our conversations with the Chinese while we're there," a US official said.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will also travel alongside US President Donald Trump. Huang was supposed to be present in the lineup, but following the scandal and even before Huang resigned, Nvidia was dropped from the roster.