Government leaders

Trump asked Xi if Beijing wanted US weapons: a joke, a gambit or something more?

South China Morning Post28 September 2026, 04:06 UTCUnited States of America

Donald Trump asked President Xi Jinping whether Beijing wanted to buy American weapons, the US ambassador to China said on Sunday, prompting the State Department to quickly rule out any such deal with Washington’s principal strategic competitor. “He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some at one point,” the ambassador David Perdue said on Fox News after Xi’s state visit to the White House last week. He did not say when Trump raised the question, what prompted it, or how the...

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