President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met in South Korea on Thursday, looking to cool an increasingly heated relationship between their two countries at their first meeting since Trump returned to office.

“We’re going to have a very successful meeting, I have no doubt,” Trump told reporters before the start of the sit-down in the port city of Busan.

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He called Xi a longtime friend and “tough negotiator,” though he added that he wasn’t sure whether they would sign a deal at the end of it.

“Could be,” Trump said. “I think we’ll have a great understanding.”

For his part, Xi acknowledged “frictions” between the world’s two biggest economies, saying that “given our different national conditions, we

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