Trump En Route to Seoul: Vows ‘Boats of Death’ Crackdown as He Prepares High-Stakes Meeting with Xi Jinping
During the final stretch of his Asia tour, President Donald Trump struck an optimistic yet forceful tone aboard Air Force One, expressing confidence in his upcoming talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit. Speaking with reporters en route to South Korea, Trump said he was “very confident” in his relationship with Xi and hinted at a breakthrough on a series of pressing issues — from trade imbalances to the deadly fentanyl crisis. “China is going to be working with me,” he said firmly. “We’re going to do something, I believe.” His remarks came just hours before his scheduled address at the APEC CEOs Luncheon in Gyeongju, where he doubled down on his promise to “restore fairness” in global trade and secure America’s borders.
Fentanyl trafficking, Trump said, would top the agenda in his closed-door meeting with the Chinese leader. He linked the crisis to what he described as “boats of death” entering the U.S. through weak southern border policies under the previous administration, claiming hundreds of thousands of American lives have been lost. “Under Biden and open borders, stuff was flowing,” Trump said. “I think they killed 300,000 people last year — fentanyl drugs coming through the southern border. And now nobody gets through this. We’re very tough on the border.” He credited his administration with reducing illegal maritime drug trafficking by “about 80%” and praised Border Patrol and ICE agents as “amazing people doing an impossible job.”
Beyond the fentanyl crisis, Trump’s Asia stopover also carried weight on international security matters, including renewed tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. Yet he framed the Xi meeting as a defining moment in reshaping U.S.-China cooperation. “We’ll have a great meeting with President Xi,” he said. “And a lot of problems are going to be solved.” His comments signal not only a renewed push for cross-border accountability but also a broader diplomatic effort to fuse America’s domestic security agenda with its global economic ambitions — a blend of nationalism and negotiation that has long defined Trump’s foreign policy playbook.
