White House Assistant Press Secretary Olivia Wales confirmed the information to reporters on Friday. She said the meeting will focus on reducing the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide; Trump believes the proliferation of nuclear weapons is extremely dangerous. A senior US administration official said Washington is not expecting any immediate agreement or major understanding from the meeting; it will be the first discussion at the top level and the beginning of future talks on nuclear arms control.
According to US officials, Trump will discuss the Iran war at the meeting; however, he does not plan to put the Russia-Ukraine war on the agenda. The official said separate diplomatic talks between Washington and Moscow are ongoing on the Ukraine issue; since China is not directly involved in this process, the United States does not see the need to raise the issue at the trilateral meeting.
The talks on nuclear arms control are taking place at a time when the term of New START, the last nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, expired last February. As a result, for the first time in more than five decades, there is no effective bilateral treaty-based limit on the arsenals of the two countries with the most nuclear weapons. Trump did not accept Russia's proposal to extend the treaty by another year; instead, he has taken a position in favor of a new, improved and modern nuclear arms control treaty that also includes China. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Russia has the most nuclear warheads in the world; the United States and China come next, but China's number of weapons is much lower than that of the United States and Russia.
The White House said Trump will leave Washington on Monday (November 16). He will first attend the Quad leaders' meeting and the US-ASEAN special summit in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Then, after arriving in Shenzhen on Wednesday (November 18), he will attend a bilateral meeting and a working lunch with Xi Jinping on Thursday; the trilateral meeting will follow. The Trump-Xi meeting will also discuss progress in implementing the trade agreement with China; there is no plan for new tariff changes. Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk is also accompanying Trump on the trip, but he will not attend the formal meetings.
The context of the 1945 Yalta Conference has also come up around this meeting of the three leaders. However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the comparison, saying that if any understanding is reached in Shenzhen, it cannot be imposed on other countries; at the same time, he described the meeting as extremely important. On the other hand, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed concern and feared that an attempt might be made to reach an understanding on the country's future without including Ukraine in the talks.
