The US president claimed that the Chinese leader had “publicly stated” that China would not act against Taiwan while President Trump was in the White House “because they know the consequences.”
Published November 2, 2025
US President Donald Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping had assured him that China would not seek to unify Taiwan with mainland China while the Republican leader was in office.
President Trump said on Sunday that during his first face-to-face meeting with President Xi in six years in South Korea on Thursday, the long-contentious issue of Taiwan “didn’t even come up.” The talks mainly focused on US-China trade tensions.
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“President Trump has said it publicly, and his people have said publicly in meetings, ‘We’re not going to do anything while President Trump is president,’ because they know the consequences,” Trump said in an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes program that aired Sunday.
In an interview, President Trump was asked whether he would order the U.S. military to take action if China were to take military action against Taiwan.
The United States has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan under both Republican and Democratic administrations, seeking to stay out of the question of whether the United States would support Taiwan in such a scenario.
“We’ll see, and he understands the answer,” Trump said of Xi.
But Trump declined to reveal his true intentions in an interview Friday at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, adding: “You can’t give away your secrets. They know.”
U.S. officials have long worried that China could use military force against Taiwan, an autonomous democratic nation that China claims is part of its territory.
The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which governs relations between Taiwan and the United States, does not require the United States to intervene militarily in the event of China’s invasion, but it is U.S. policy to ensure that Taiwan has the resources to defend itself and prevent China from unilaterally changing its status.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., did not directly respond to an Associated Press question about whether President Trump had received any assurances regarding Taiwan from Mr. Xi or other Chinese officials. He said in a statement that China “will never allow any person or force to separate Taiwan from China.”
“The Taiwan issue is China’s internal affairs and is at the heart of China’s core interests. How to resolve the Taiwan issue is a matter for the Chinese people, and only the Chinese people can decide.”
The White House also did not provide details about when Xi or other Chinese officials told Trump that military action against Taiwan was off the table during the Republican president’s term.
The “60 Minutes” interview was Trump’s first appearance on the program since he settled a lawsuit with CBS News over the summer over an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. President Trump claimed the interview was deceptively edited to favor Democrats ahead of the 2024 presidential election. President Trump initially sought $10 billion in damages, but later increased his claim to $20 billion.
