Global News Podcast - Trump and Xi meet to discuss trade war

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have met for the first time since 2019 to discuss a possible truce in the US-China trade war. The leaders of the world's two biggest economies shook hands and spoke of friendship ahead of the "amazing" meeting in South Korea. President Trump said they agreed a cut in tariffs and a rare earth minerals deal. Also: the US says it will begin testing its nuclear weapons to keep up with Russia and China; Hurricane Melissa moves towards the Bahamas and Cuba after causing unprecedented devastation in Jamaica; Brazil's president condemns the police raid that killed more than 130 people in Rio de Janeiro; the long lost wolf spider is re-discovered in the UK; what drives those who want to live forever; and the art of presidential gift giving.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. America is changing, and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is the global story. Every weekday will bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

You're listening to the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 430 GMT on Thursday the 30th of October. The US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have held talks in South Korea. So did they end their trade war? On his way to the meeting, Mr Trump announced that the US will start testing its national. nuclear weapons. Also today, Jamaica's Prime Minister says Hurricane Melissa caused total devastation in parts of the island, with the town of Black River completely destroyed. Also in the podcast, Anga in Brazil after a police operation leaves 130 people dead.

This war is a war against a parallel state that is proving itself stronger every day. More on that later. But first, have the world's two biggest economies agreed a truce in their long-running trade war? The U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping both sounded optimistic at the start of their much-anticipated talks in the South Korean city of Busan. It's a great honor to be with a friend of mine, really for a long time now, if you think about it. We've already agreed to a lot of things, and we'll agree to some more right now. But President, she is a great leader of a great country,

and I think we're going to have a fantastic relationship for a long period of time. President Trump, it is a great pleasure for me as well to meet you, and it feels very warm seeing you again because it's been many years. And in the face of winds, waves, and challenges, you and I should stay the right course and ensure the steady sailing forward of the giant ship of China-U.S. relations. The words of President Xi Jinping has spoken by a translator. The meeting lasted one hour and 40 minutes, according to Chinese state media.

The two men made no comments as they left. President Trump is now on his way home from South Korea. So how did the talks go? I put that question to our Beijing correspondent, Stephen MacDonald. It was interesting in those opening remarks from Xi Jinping, We had China's leader praising Donald Trump's efforts for peace on the world stage. Now, I'm not sure if his staff had time to pass on the news that just before the meeting started, Donald Trump announced a resumption of nuclear weapons testing in the US in response to China's growing nuclear arsenal.

Now, that wouldn't sound very peaceful to the Chinese leader. And we'll have to find out from the readouts if they went on to actually speak about this at all during the meeting. When it comes to the trade front, though, when you speak to analysts here, this is how they see, we've got to this point and what's going to come from this meeting. Donald Trump started a trade war. China stood up to him. Donald Trump lost and there's Xi Jinping, essentially, according to the Chinese, the victor, really, sitting there saying, well, you know, now let's find a way to move forward. But essentially, there'll be some sort of announcements to have come from this, bits and pieces, but we're back to where we started. On the big trade headaches that these two

countries have, there's been no movement. The Donald Trump trade war has failed, really, to make any movement. And the belief here is that there won't be any movement on this at all, as long as Donald Trump's still in power. So on these crucial issues, like coming from the US to China, China wants more access to U.S. high-tech, computer chips and the like, super software. And the other way, the U.S. wants more access to China's magnets and its rare earths. They'll give a bit on both of those things, but really it's a kind of intractable problem because they both know the more they provide of this stuff to one another, the more not only will their key rivals economies improve when it comes to high tech, but also they can boost their military power by using this stuff. And so the real

question is how much they're prepared to give one another. It certainly won't be just open door, everything's cool, we're going to start openly trading this stuff, not at all. But both sides now know that if the US tries to pressure China, China won't buckle. Does that change the relationship between the two? Yeah, I think essentially Donald Trump misled is. followers when he said that trade wars are easy to win, that all he's got to do is whack a few tariffs on China and they'll cave within days. Well, Xi Jinping and his administration have shown they're not going to do that, that the mantra from here has been, we don't want a trade war with the US, but we're not afraid of one. And they've shown how resilient they can be. So the US is going to find another

way. The tariffs just don't work to pressure China. Unfortunately, for the whole world, this trade war hurts everyone. It hurts the big superpowers. And it hurts the big superpowers. And it hurts all these other countries which are trading with them. And interestingly, though, when you look at the world more broadly, you know, they're around 150 countries, like 70% of the world, that trade more with China than the US. And it just shows you, on the one hand, Trump can talk about his own power, but the economic power of China is also enormous. And so this is something Washington has also got to find a way to face up to. Stephen MacDonald in Beijing. Well, as we're recording,

this President Trump has just been giving a news conference, presumably on board Air Force One. He said the meeting with Xi Jinping was amazing. A lot of decisions were made. Purchases of soybeans will start immediately, and we agreed that Xi will work very hard to stop fentanyl. Well, as Stephen was saying, on his way to Busan, President Trump announced that the US was to start testing America's nuclear weapons immediately because he said Russia and China were continuously testing theirs. I heard more from our North America correspondent, David Willis. In a post on his truth social, social media platform, Oliver Donald Trump said that he had instructed the US Defense Department to immediately start testing nuclear weapons because of other countries' testing programs, he writes,

I've instructed the Department of War, that's a reference to what's generally known as the Department of Defense, to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately. And he goes on to make the point that complete update and renovation of those weapons took place during his first term in office. I hated to do it, he writes, but I had no choice. Russia is second and China a distant third, but will be even within five years. Now, this announcement, of course, comes only days after Russia are now,

that it had successfully tested a nuclear-powered cruise missile, which it claimed could travel more than 8,000 miles and penetrate U.S. defense systems. And in response to that, the following day President Trump warned Vladimir Putin that the United States has a nuclear submarine stationed right off their shores, as he put it, and was not playing games. All this, of course, coming directly ahead of that much-anticipated meeting with Xi Jinping. And do we know any more about how these tests will be carried out? Well, it's interesting. Vladimir Putin, of course, has hailed Russia's nuclear-capable cruise missile as unique and something that no other country in the world possesses.

It was first unveiled back in 2018, but a test of that missile the following year failed and caused an explosion in which several Russian scientists died. This latest test took place just over a week ago and appears to have been successful. To directly answer your question, Oliver, we don't know how exactly these tests on the part of the United States will be carried out. But President Trump is clearly very keen to match Russia's capability in this regard.

Its new missile is said to have almost unlimited range, And according to the Kremlin, during this latest test, a week ago, it was airborne for more than 15 hours. David Willis in Los Angeles, a couple more lines coming from President Trump. He said he reached a deal with Xi Jinping on China's rare earths. And he will be going to China in April, President Trump, that is, while Xi Jinping will visit the US sometime after that. Those lines coming in as we record this podcast from. President Trump. Some other news now on Hurricane Melissa brought unprecedented devastation as it swept across

Jamaica, according to the UN coordinator there. Four people are confirmed dead, with at least 20 others killed in Haiti as the storm moved through the Caribbean and over Cuba. In Jamaica, residents were shocked at the force of the worst hurricane in the country's history, with the town of Black River completely wiped out. The Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the BBC the priority was to get supplies to islanders cut off by the storm. We need to reach the communities that have been marooned.

So we are clearing roads trying to get to those communities. We need to bring the humanitarian relief to them, food, temporary shelter, medicine, and in some instances, water. We do have a very robust disaster management plan and administrative bureaucracy behind the seeds. So we should be able to stand up all the necessary elements of our effective relief program. Eastern Jamaica, including the capital, Kingston, was not too badly affected by the storm. But our correspondent Nick Davis told us of the destruction he witnessed as he travelled across the island.

Slowly but surely, for more westwards you got, you started to see things like advertising hoardings on their sides. It was until I got to Manderville, which is an old colonial English hill station, that you really saw where the mountains really played a role in how this storm. storm played out, especially in some of the smaller houses in this area, they really took a battering. There were electricity poles down, there were electricity wires on the ground, and the actual main hospital was completely underwater. There's a skylight at the entrance, and members of staff were still mopping away water, which had sort of come in during the storm. But the thing which really struck me was talking to staff who were waiting to transport

patients who were in Black River Hospital. So even though they were in a flooded hospital, this was the only care facility which could help people who were in a hospital in a town which is completely destroyed. Black River is gone. And so two buses and a couple of ambulances went out to bring those patients back. It's an hour's journey under normal conditions. It took them eight hours to make the journey and they're still not on their way back yet. but it shows you how much devastation's gone on over the course of the passage of Melissa through central Jamaica. They had to battle power lines down. They had to battle flooding extensively on the route and these people will be admitted into hospital later. But they're just 75, 80 of many

hundreds of more who may need treatment. Now Melissa made land for west of where you are, the Montego Bay, end of the island. Have you heard about what's happened there? Oliver, it was actually one of the most difficult things I've ever had to deal with on a personal and professional level is getting voice notes, seeing on social media, my friend's homes destroyed. I hesitate to say it, but there's no other way of describing it. You know, a story doesn't come more close and personal than seeing that and hearing their stories. We're actually making our way to Montego Bay tomorrow, and a city which literally was split in half with a river running through the centre of it. We know that the airport over there is so badly damaged. It can't even be used for flying in relief. It was

compromised during the storm. But as we get over there, we'll be able to tell you more about what's happening and how people over there are coping. And how hard will it be, judging from what you've seen so far, how hard will it be for Jamaica to rebuild, recover from this? I spoke about Black River earlier on. This is a town which was built by the Spanish and before that inhabited by the Taino, the earliest civilization in Jamaica, and then the English.

And now there's nothing left. It's been wiped off the face of the earth. And this is one of the most beautiful Georgian towns in the entire Caribbean. So if that's just one town and then you replicate that by, all of the small little hamlets and communities which are scattered around

And all of those small farmers who their livelihoods have been destroyed in a moment, it's just incredible. Nick Davis in Jamaica. And still to come on the global news podcast. None of us really thought we'd find it. But my attitude to all of these things is if you act like you're going to find it, chances are it's going to help you find it. A long-lost wolf spider is rediscovered in Britain. America is changing, and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval.

It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is the global story. Every weekday will bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. The Brazilian president, Luis Enaccio Lula de Silva, says crime must be tackled without endangering the lives of police or innocent families. He was speaking a day after an anti-gang operation in Rio de Janeiro, left more than 130 people

dead. The Rio governor, Claudio Castro, an ally of the far-right ex-president Jay Bolsanaru, has been summoned to explain what happened. He says the people killed were criminals and the only victims were the four police officers who died. Our correspondent Ione Wells has this report from Ria. One by one, the community of this favela in Rio de Janeiro collected dead bodies from their community

and laid them out in the road. By Wednesday morning, dozens lay in Pena, one of the sites targeted in Rio's deadliest ever police raid. The corpses lie mostly shirtless. Some of their faces are mutilated. Family members gripped the sheets that roughly cover their bloodied limbs. I just want to take my son out of here and bury him. You know why?

It won't do any good. The truth is, it won't do any good because here there are a lot of people crying, but outside there are a lot of people applauding what they did, which was a massacre. This mother touches her son's body, saying the government must pay for this massacre. They can't destroy so many lives, so many families, and get away with it, she says. The raid on Tuesday was carried out by 2,500 police and soldiers in helicopters, armoured vehicles and on foot. It was targeting a drug trafficking gang, Comando Vomelio, Red Command. It led to shootouts, fires, and according to police, some gang members used drones to drop explosives on officers.

The city's governor, Claudio Castro, described those killed as criminals. This war is a war against a parallel state that is proving itself stronger every day, with greater military power, with more financial power, and especially here in Rio de Janeiro, using this military power and this financial power to carry out almost a territorial occupation. Police raids like this are not unusual in Rio, but the number of dead is. Families have demanded justice, describing it as an excessive use of force, with ordinary civilians also caught in the crossfires. This activist is still in shock.

I am at a last for words to convey the significance, the gravity of what we have been witnessing since yesterday into the early hours of this morning, which I believe will go down in history as one of the greatest massacres in our country. For those in power in the city, this is a war against narco-terrorism. For those who live in these favelas, their home now feels like a war zone. And they have little faith, this bloodshed will solve the root causes of crime. Ione Wells in Rio. A species of wolf spider thought lost forever has been found in Britain,

40 years after it was last seen. Its reappearance on the Isle of White, just off the south coast of England, is being celebrated as a big win for conservation. Georgina Rana told us more about the discovery. The arachnid, also called the white-knuckled wolf spider, is critically endangered. It had last been seen in Britain in 1985, and scientists were on the verge of declaring it extinct. But two entomologists, scientists who study insects, when looking for the spider in a remote area of the Isle of White, where the National Trust charity is running a conservation project,

Graham Lyons, alongside his colleague Mark Telfer, searched high and low, with a type of handheld vacuum that sucks up material from the ground and safely deposits it in a container. We had four hours to look for it, and to be fair, none of us really thought we'd find it. But my attitude to all of these things is if you act like you're going to find it, chances are it's going to help you find it.

On the way back, with about 10 minutes left on the clock, I was very keen to just keep going up to the bitter end. Just as the two scientists were about to board a boat to go home, Graham spotted something, a tiny wolf spider, just three millimeters in length, with a tell-tale bright orange legs and white marks. And I kept going right to the end, and I found a second animal with one minute left to go on the clock. You know, and it's great. One, you always think with entomology, one's a bit of a fluke, but two is a population, you know.

Naturally, Graham is delighted. Oh, made up. I mean, I'm on a quest to see as many species as I can in Britain in my life. Spiders feature very heavily in that. Yeah, it was my 599th British spider. There's about 740-odd species on the British list. So always very pleased to find a new spider. It's not just a personal victory. It's a big success for the National Trust Conservation Project at Newtown, which aims to save some of Britain's most endangered plants and animals. And the British Arachnological Society has welcomed the rediscovery of what it called one of the country's epic lost species.

Georgina Ranhardt. Some of the richest people on the planet, particularly those involved in tech, want to live forever and have invested money to try to make it happen. BBC broadcaster Alex Kratoski has interviewed many of those trying to conquer their aging for her new book. book, The Immortalists, the Death of Death, and the Race for Eternal Life. While Professor John Tregoning underwent tests on all his organs to learn more about human longevity,

and he wrote about it in Live Forever, a curious scientist's guide to wellness, aging, and death. Evan Davis spoke to them both and asked Alex first whether the people she spoke to were fantasists or egotists. Well, you hit two nails in the head right there, but I also think that they have a lot of faith, they have a lot of hope. And like the rest of us, you know, this notion of not existing is actually kind of scary. And so this is their way of trying to control the future to kind of live through uncertainty. Do they think they're going to actually make a difference? Oh, yes. Do they think they will conquer the aging process to some significant degree?

Absolutely. And I think that there are sort of three different ways that people are imagining this. The first are those people who actually do believe that we are going to converge with artificial intelligence and that we're going to upload our consciousnesses into a computer and live on the cloud on server farms. Then there's the others that believe that technology is going to extend our lives and that will allow us to forever upgrade ourselves with medicine and science. And then we've got our third group, which are perhaps the egotists that you referred to in

the first place. But these are the folks who want to live forever, who believe that they're going to live forever. but they know that they need to get there via political means. Absolutely fascinating sort of sociology of all of this. Well, let's talk to someone who's actually done some of the work. So, John, just tell us what you did because your book documents this. I think the instinct was similar. I was kind of sitting there having a haircut.

My hair, which I was telling myself, is blonde, piled up, and it was grey. And I thought, well, what am I going to die of? What can I do about it? So I tried some of the things people say. So I did an extreme fast for a week. I had my microbiome measured. I had all of my bloods taken and measured different things. Cold water swimming, ate more kimchi. And just went through the list of the things that people pitch. It certainly had a relatively affordable level. Right. And what did you conclude about

the quest for defying ageing? Put simply, we are all going to die. It is inevitable. You can definitely accelerate it. So if you smoke heavily or if you drink heavily or if you live somewhere where there's a lot of pollution, you are going to die quicker. But on every part of our body from about the age of 20 is on a downhill linear slope. It's easy to accelerate death. Did you find anything that's helpful in decelerating? Yeah, so there are two, I think, really important things. The first links back to my day job is that actually getting vaccinated slows many of the signs of aging.

So flu vaccine reduces the rate of heart attacks. So does the RSV vaccine. The Schingrichs vaccine can slow the rate of dementia. So getting your winter vaccines can reduce the onset of non-communicable diseases. The second one is more complicated and that's be socially connected. So people who are socially isolated have a higher risk of dying and it's equivalent to 15 cigarettes a day, a substantial amount of alcohol a day, but social connectivity increases the quality and the quantity of your life. I mean, that's just a very long way, Alex, from the kind of things your subjects have been talking about,

100%. Absolutely. And I think that this does suggest that there is a fear, right? And also there's a kind of philosophy within the valley of conquering. I mentioned this notion of control of seeking to kind of to be certain in an uncertain world. And sure, these things will extend our lives to our natural cell by date, but they're wanting to go further. They believe that our physiology is something that can be reduced into data. You know, I'm sure, John, when you were doing your experiments, and right now, frankly, I have, you know, trackers on. These are the, this is, if you think about the fitness tracker, telling you how many paces you've done today, probably measuring your heartbeat or something. That's right. How often you sleep. You know, all of those types of things, it always tells me when I am successful, but it also tells me when I'm not. And a really interesting thing that I learned when I became pregnant is that I had always been sort of obsessed with this notion. of my numbers are always going up. Well, I'm growing eyeballs. I'm like, I'm growing organs

inside my body and my personal bests were going down. These devices did not take into consideration the me that was going through pregnancy or perhaps was unwell or perhaps had a physical disability. And I often use that as a way to illustrate how the technologists are envisaging quite an impoverished way of health. Alex Kratoski and John Trigone. While he was in South Korea, President Trump was given a gift by his host of a replica of a crown

worn by an ancient Korean ruler. I'd like to wear it right now. Thank you so much. We'll cherish you. Thank you very much, everybody. We present this gold crown to you on this joyous occasion of your state visit to Gyeongju,

because it symbolizes the spirit of Shilah, which brought peace to the Korean Peninsula for the first time. So what do these gifts tell us about the president and his relationship with other world leaders? James Kumarasami asked Politico's White House reporter Daniel Lipman. It reflects how he's a very transactional president, very ego-driven as well. He responds well to flattery.

So something like a $400 million jet from Qatar, that really sang to him and made him very favorable to Qatar. And how does he compare to previous presidents? Because he's not the first one to get pretty elaborate gifts. No, he's not. There was a president a few decades ago. They accepted a baby elephant from a foreign leader.

And I wonder what happened to that elephant probably was donated to the National Zoo. You have had presidents like Barack Obama who've gotten golf-themed gifts. Trump's got plenty of those as well, hasn't he? Yeah, he's gotten quite a number countries and foreign leaders have given him golf clubs and golf putters. Foreign leaders, they're always trying to figure out what would win their counterparty most favor.

Gift giving can be a little bit one-sided, can't it? I mean, there was a famous case when Barack Obama gave the then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a DVD box set after he'd been given a penholder car from the timbers of the sister ship to the one that the White House desk is made from, which struck some people as being a little bit

lopsided. Does Donald Trump give good gifts? He doesn't really put as much attention and thought into that as his foreign leader counterparts because usually he is the one who has the power and the relationship. And so he's not spending all of his time thinking about, oh, how do I win over Mark Carney? And I think he gave Carney a jersey because he was a hockey player at Harvard University. And so there is this imbalance and Trump doesn't want to have to look like he's spending tens of thousands of dollars for foreign leader gift. I must have I'm slightly surprised he gave Mark Carney anything, given what the relationship is.

I mean, does this help? Does this make a difference in diplomacy? I think it does. They would not be doing this if it didn't. I don't think it's a determinative factor if you're going to get lots of tariffs, but you want to have something to make it look like you had a good meeting with President Trump, even if you had some disputes in the actual meeting or if Trump was mean to you in front of the press. So the Ukrainians have really thought about this. But there was a funny moment when the South African leader told Trump, I'm sorry I don't have a jet to offer you and President Trump said, well, I wish you did.

Daniel Lippman from Politico. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Martin Baker and produced by Stephanie Zacherson and Wendy Urquhart, our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval.

It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redmond in London, and this is the global story. Every weekday will bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.