Rubio meets China’s Wang amid trade tensions, says odds of Trump-Xi meeting high

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that his talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi were “positive and constructive,” as the two global powers clashed over influence in Asia amid heightened trade tensions.

Rubio, on his first Asia tour since taking office, met Wang in Malaysia on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit and Asean Regional Forum — gatherings overshadowed by steep new US tariffs announced this week by President Donald Trump. Many Asian nations, including US allies, were hit by the levies.

The meeting followed stern warnings from Beijing, which has threatened retaliation if Washington reinstates heavy tariffs on Chinese goods next month and pressures other countries to bypass China in global supply chains.

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While Wang publicly denounced the US tariffs as “typical unilateral bullying behaviour”, both sides characterised their bilateral meeting as constructive.

Rubio added that odds for a summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping were high.

“We’re two big, powerful countries, and there are always going to be issues that we disagree on. I think there’s some areas of potential cooperation and I thought it was a very constructive, positive meeting, and a lot of work to do,” Reuters quoted Rubio as saying.

Rubio emphasised that his sit-down with Wang was not a negotiation, but rather about establishing a constructive baseline to continue talks.

Rubio noted Trump had been invited to visit China, and added: “It’s a visit he wants to undertake, and so we’ll work on finding the right date for that, but I’m sure it’ll happen because the president – both presidents - want it to happen.”

“We have to build the right atmosphere and build … deliverables, so that a visit isn’t just a visit, but it actually has some takeaways from it that are concrete,” he said.

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China’s Foreign Ministry said Wang had emphasised that both countries should translate consensus reached by their leaders into policies and actions.

“Both sides agreed that the meeting was positive, pragmatic and constructive,” it said.

Trip overshadowed by tariffs

Rubio’s visit was part of an effort to renew U.S. focus on the Indo-Pacific region and look beyond conflicts in the Middle East and Europe that have consumed much of the administration’s attention since Trump’s return to office in January.

But this was overshadowed by this week’s announcement of steep U.S. tariffs on imports from many Asian countries and U.S. allies, including 25% targeting Japan, South Korea and Malaysia, 32% for Indonesia, 36% for Thailand and Cambodia and 40% on goods from Myanmar and Laos.

China, initially singled out with levies exceeding 100%, has until August 12 to reach a deal with Washington to avoid Trump’s reinstating additional import curbs imposed during tit-for-tat tariff exchanges in April and May.

Analysts said Rubio would use the trip to press the case that the United States remains a better partner than China, Washington’s main strategic rival. Rubio met his counterparts from Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia on Friday.

Southeast Asia expert Murray Hiebert, from Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was positive Rubio had made his first Indo-Pacific trip, but his pledge about US engagement was undercut by Trump’s treatment of key friends and partners on tariffs.

“This made it much easier for Wang Yi to talk about China’s stable and reliable economic relations,” he said.

Wang rebuked the United States in Kuala Lumpur, saying no country should support or agree with its tariffs, according to remarks released by Beijing on Friday.

He told Thailand’s foreign minister the tariffs had been abused and “undermined the free trade system, and interfered with the stability of the global production and supply chain.”

During a meeting with his Cambodian counterpart, Wang said the U.S. levies were an attempt to deprive Southeast Asian countries of their legitimate right to development.

“We believe that Southeast Asian countries have the ability to cope with complex situations, adhere to principled positions, and safeguard their own interests,” he said.

In a joint communique, ASEAN foreign ministers expressed concern over rising global trade tensions and called for a transparent and fair multilateral trading system.

Without mentioning the United States, they said unilateral tariffs were “counterproductive and risk exacerbating global economic fragmentation”.

Indispensable partnership

Rubio also met Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday and said he and Lavrov shared some ideas on a new or different Russian approach on Ukraine.

“I don’t want to oversell it, OK, but it was constructive,” he said on Friday. “We’ll find out, but there are some things that we will potentially explore, and I relayed that to the president and our team last night.”

Rubio also met Japan’s foreign minister and South Korea’s first vice foreign minister to discuss strengthening their “indispensable trilateral partnership”, the U.S. State Department said.

Asked about Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s remarks on Thursday that Tokyo needs to wean itself off of its dependence on Washington, Rubio said it was not a comment to be viewed negatively.

“We obviously have very strong commitments and an alliance with Japan. We continue to cooperate very closely with them,” he said.

With inputs from agencies