World
US confident of Gaza ceasefire despite strikes. Australia deports asylum seekers to Nauru. Sudan siege ends in massacres. By Jonathan Pearlman.
Trump and Xi move towards calming rising trade tensions
Great power rivalry
South Korea: United States President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, met in South Korea on Thursday and edged closer to a deal aimed at resolving escalating tensions that threaten to upend trade between the world’s two largest economies.
After meeting with Xi for the first time since 2019, Trump said he had agreed to reduce tariffs on China and that Xi would suspend export controls on rare earths for a year.
Describing the 90-minute meeting as “amazing”, Trump said he would visit China in April and that the two leaders were close to signing a one-year trade deal. He said the pair discussed the war in Ukraine but not tensions over the status of Taiwan.
“He is a great leader,” Trump said. “We have come to a conclusion on many important points.”
The two leaders appeared tense as they shook hands ahead of long-awaited talks that followed a series of retaliatory curbs on trade and technology.
China last month introduced rare earths controls that could affect US production of smartphones, fighter jets and other technologies, prompting Trump to threaten to impose an additional 100 per cent tariff on Chinese goods.
Ahead of the meeting, Xi said the countries “do not always see eye to eye” but could be friends.
“It is normal for the two leading economies of the world to have friction now and again,” he said. “You and I should stay the right course.”
At the meeting, held at an air base on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, the leaders discussed plans for China to crack down on the illicit trade of fentanyl and to resume purchases of US soybeans, and for the US to ease restrictions on exports to China of advanced computing chips.
Trade between the US and China has boomed since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
The US is the biggest importer of Chinese goods, and China is the third-biggest importer of US goods after Mexico and Canada. But Trump launched a trade war on China during his first term and has threatened dramatic new tariffs during his second. In April, he threatened a 145 per cent tariff on Chinese goods and Xi retaliated with a proposed 125 per cent levy. Analysts had warned these steep tariffs, if imposed, would cause global financial chaos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNrXJUFJBqY
The neighbourhood
Nauru: Australia confirmed this week it had started deporting detainees to Nauru as part of a $2.5 billion deal to resettle about 280 asylum seekers.
David Adeang, the president of Nauru, told parliament last Friday that the first person from Australia had arrived as part of the deal, triggering an initial payment by Australia of $408 million.
On Tuesday, Australia’s home affairs minister, Tony Burke, confirmed “the first transfer had occurred” but did not say who or how many people had been deported.
“When someone’s visa is cancelled, they should leave,” he said in a statement.
Australia made the secretive 30-year deal with Nauru after the High Court ruled in 2023 that the federal government could not indefinitely detain asylum seekers, most of whom have been convicted of crimes or had visas cancelled on character grounds.
The migrants could not be sent to their home countries because they are stateless or at risk of persecution.
About 280 are expected to be sent to Nauru and will be allowed to live among the local population. Nauru has about 10,000 residents and a landmass of 21 square kilometres.
Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay criticised the deal with
Nauru on Wednesday, saying it was “shrouded in secrecy” and failed to provide “clarity” about the proposed treatment of the migrants in Nauru.
“The lack of confirmation about even this most basic detail of the transfer underscores the secrecy surrounding the arrangement,” she said in a statement.
Democracy in retreat
Gaza: The United States insisted this week a ceasefire in Gaza was holding after a series of heavy air strikes by Israel, which said it was responding to an attack by Hamas.
Israel hit several sites across Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 100 people, according to local officials.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, claimed the strikes were a response to violations of the ceasefire, saying Hamas had launched an attack that killed a soldier and had failed to return the bodies of hostages.
Hamas denied responsibility for the attack and insisted it was committed to
the ceasefire.
Hamas has returned 15 bodies of hostages but has yet to return a further 13 as agreed in the ceasefire deal. The group has said it is struggling to locate and retrieve the remaining bodies.
Israel released footage this week that appeared to show Hamas burying a body and then “staging” the recovery of the remains for the Red Cross.
Following the Israeli strikes, US President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday the ceasefire was not at risk and that Israel was entitled to respond to Hamas attacks.
“They killed an Israeli soldier,” he said. “So the Israelis hit back. And they should hit back.”
Aid groups said supplies have increased since the ceasefire began on October 10 but remain inadequate. The ceasefire has allowed 600 trucks a day to enter Gaza but many contain food and goods for merchants rather than aid.
Shaina Low, from the Norwegian Refugee Council, told The New York Times the restoration of the private sector was an important part of Gaza’s recovery but should not occur “at the expense of aid”.
Spotlight: Sudan siege ends in massacres
For 18 months, the city of El Fasher in Sudan has been subject to a brutal siege by the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary force that has been fighting a civil war against the national army since 2023.
The siege prompted hundreds of thousands of residents to flee and raised grave fears about the fate of the remaining 250,000 residents.
Last Sunday, the RSF seized El Fasher, reportedly after reaching a deal that allowed the remaining government troops to evacuate. Within 48 hours, the RSF had reportedly killed more than 2000 civilians.
Footage on social media this week, believed to be captured by RSF militants, showed them committing massacres of people who had surrendered or were fleeing the city.
One video showed a man believed to be an RSF officer, Al-Fatih Abdallah Idris, standing in front of 10 seated captives and saying “I have no time for playing” before shooting them. In another clip, he says, “I have seen a nice girl and I want her.”
The siege of El Fasher, which had two million residents before the war and was the government’s last stronghold in the Darfur region, has left the city without food and medicine, leaving residents to survive on animal feed.
Satellite images released this week by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab appeared to show clusters of bodies on the ground in El Fasher alongside “reddish ground discolouration” that was believed to be pools of blood. Human Rights Watch said the images “reveal a horrifying truth: the Rapid Support Forces feel free to carry out mass atrocities with little fear of consequences”.
The RSF has reportedly received artillery, drones and weapons from the United Arab Emirates. The military has reportedly been backed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey.
Sudan’s military chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said in a televised address on Monday the retreat was designed “to spare citizens and the rest of the city from destruction”.
Thousands of residents attempted to flee the city this week for a nearby camp that already houses 650,000 displaced people.
The war in Sudan has left an estimated 400,000 people dead. About 13 million people have been displaced.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 31, 2025 as "Trump and Xi move towards calming rising trade tensions".
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