Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump welcomed the possibility of talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin while sounding less confident about reviving his personal diplomacy with Kim.
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know,” Trump said when asked about meeting the North Korean leader during his planned trip. “I’m not sure that anybody’s asking for a meeting.”
He nevertheless stressed their personal rapport. “I get along with him very well,” Trump said. “But my relationship with Kim Jong-un is very good.”
The remarks tempered expectations Trump himself had helped build. In August, he said he hoped to meet Kim this year. As recently as last Monday, he suggested a meeting could take place during his Asian trip, adding: “That’ll be exciting, won’t it? But I get along with him.”
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit is scheduled for Nov. 18–19 in Shenzhen. A potential Trump-Kim encounter would be separate from the proposed three-way talks with Xi and Putin.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Putin had proposed the trilateral gathering to discuss a settlement to the war in Ukraine. Trump said his preferred agenda would instead be nuclear weapons and denuclearization, describing such talks as “a very positive thing for the world.”
The proposal comes amid a widening gap in nuclear arms control. The February expiration of New START removed the last legally binding limits on U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals, while China has repeatedly resisted joining arms-control negotiations.
For North Korea, however, Trump’s renewed overtures confront a markedly different diplomatic landscape from his first term.
Trump and Kim met in Singapore in June 2018, Hanoi in February 2019 and at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom in June 2019. Their diplomacy failed to produce an agreement exchanging sanctions relief for dismantlement of the North’s nuclear program.
Since then, Pyongyang has acquired greater strategic value to Moscow through its support for Russia’s war effort, supplying artillery ammunition and ballistic missiles and sending troops to fight in Russia’s Kursk region. A June 2024 treaty committed the two countries to provide military assistance if either came under armed attack.
Pyongyang has also warmed its rapport with Beijing, which gained momentum after a Kim-Xi summit in Pyongyang in June this year followed by exchanges or senior delegations in July.
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