President Trump will have a joint meeting with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia during a summit in China next week, a White House spokeswoman said on Friday.
It will be the first trilateral meeting the three leaders have held together, and the third meeting Mr. Trump has had with Mr. Xi in person this year. At the meeting with Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi, Mr. Trump plans to discuss the war against Iran, but is not expected to bring up Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Olivia Wales, the White House spokeswoman, said that Mr. Trump would also address the threat of nuclear proliferation. U.S. officials have expressed concerns about a steady buildup of China’s arsenal in recent years, and a U.S. nuclear arms control treaty with Russia expired in February.
“The president has made it clear that, among other topics, he will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world, whose proliferation President Trump believes is very dangerous,” Ms. Wales said in a telephone briefing with reporters.
Two senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the president’s travel plans, said that Mr. Trump would travel to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Manila early next week. The officials said he would then travel to Shenzhen for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, where he will meet with Mr. Xi and then both Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin.
The officials said that Mr. Trump would be joined by the billionaire Elon Musk in Shenzhen, but added that Mr. Musk would not be part of the trilateral meeting.
Mr. Trump is prepared to discuss the “difficult” topic of Beijing’s nuclear arsenal with Mr. Xi, one of the officials said.
China maintains secretive nuclear facilities and is on track to have 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, producing the weapons at a pace that has worried U.S. officials and analysts. On the call, the administration officials said that they did not expect any agreements on nuclear proliferation, and characterized the talks as a starting point.
Mr. Trump said this week that he had no plans to discuss with Mr. Xi the scandal that had engulfed Jensen Huang, who until this week was the chief executive of Nvidia, one of the largest companies in the world. Mr. Huang stepped down from his role in the wake of revelations that he had engaged in extramarital affairs, including one with Alice Huang, a woman whom U.S. intelligence officials believe is an asset of Beijing.
The officials said that the matter involving Ms. Huang was a national security issue, and did not expect Mr. Trump to discuss it with Mr. Xi during a diplomatic meeting.
