Chinese nuclear envoy in Seoul for talks on N Korea

Mr Trump's deployment of his grandchildren Arabella and Joseph was a masterstroke.

The bonhomie extended behind closed doors, where the U.S. president's grandson and granddaughter sang a traditional Chinese ballad - "Jasmine Flower" - and recited poetry for their honored guests, earning praise from their "very proud" mother Ivanka in a tweet.

Trump is trying to tell the mainland "there's a new sheriff in town, I'm a little unpredictable and bad things will happen, things that you don't like unless you get Kim 3.0 under control".

USA officials said the two sides agreed to increase cooperation on trying to get North Korea's to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and China acknowledged the need for more balanced trade with the U.S. The uncharacteristically short deadline for the talks signals China's seriousness and intent for tangible results.

President Donald Trump's administration is drafting an executive order to investigate the extent to which the unfair dumping and subsidization of certain imports adds to the U.S. trade deficit.

The US leader appeared confident when Xi arrived at the Florida venue, even hazarding a joke about his own reputation as a dealmaker.

Trump recently signed an executive order to crack down on foreign interests flooding American markets with cheap, undervalued goods. This move is seen as the first salvo against what Washington sees as unfair Chinese trade practices. But they came up empty-handed except for an agreement to ease their bilateral trade imbalance within 100 days.

Later, they plan a business meeting and dinner at a downtown Anchorage hotel before Xi returns to the airport for the 4,000-mile trip to Beijing. These changes appear to reflect the influence of advisors drawn from the world of NY business and finance - including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whose prominent role makes sense to Chinese officials accustomed to a big overlap between powerful bureaucrats and powerful families. In other words, Mr Trump is eager to remind the world that the United States will walk the talk.

The attack could also be a message to China that the US may act on its own unless China reins in the North.

North Korea has a long history of defying United Nations resolutions and other attempts to prevent it from developing nuclear arms to go with its growing ballistic-missile capabilities.

Pyongyang's attempts to acquire inter-continental ballistic missile capability that could be used to threaten the USA with nuclear attacks would register higher on Washington's national security threat barometer than the Syrian conflict.

Taking action against North Korea has been a sticking point in US talks with the Chinese.

The summit also announced a new framework to anchor high-level discussions on strategic issues. The two sides initiated the comprehensive economic dialogue and the diplomatic and security dialogue, which make up the mechanism along with the law enforcement and cybersecurity dialogue and the social and cultural issues dialogue.

The Chinese president rarely talks to the Chinese or foreign news media, making it hard to determine his opinion about the attack or how he expressed it to Trump. While China pledged more support to bring the rogue state's nuclear ambitions to an end, Tillerson said the unilateral policy still stands.

The stakes make Trump's evolving approach to China all the more important.

The two leaders seemed genuinely at ease with each other.

Trump this week hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, his private estate in West Palm Beach, Fla. For the moment, a trade war between the two Pacific powers has been averted.

The USS Carl Vinson had just been in Busan, South Korea, in mid-March to participate in Foal Eagle, an annual U.S.

The ties between Trump staffers, past and present, to Russia, was aided by Trump's willingness to start fresh with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he defended in the United States media.