President Trump asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping if he wanted to buy American weapons during their talks, US Ambassador David Perdue revealed on Fox News Sunday.
The New York Post reported that Perdue described the exchange from Xi’s three-day visit to the United States, framing it as part of Trump’s plain talk about global arms sales.
Perdue did not cast the question as a formal offer. He presented it as Trump stating a basic commercial reality to Beijing’s leader.
“President Trump continues to say, ‘Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world.’ He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some at one point,” Perdue said.
“President Trump continues to say, ‘Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world.’ He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some at one point,”
The White House was asked whether Trump was serious or needling Xi. No public clarification appeared in the available account.
The same conversations covered America’s weapons pipeline to Taiwan, the self-governing island Beijing claims as its own.
Perdue said Trump has already green-lit $11 billion in related sales and that more talks continue whenever the two leaders meet.
“President Trump’s already approved $11 billion. There are continuing conversations about other sales. He and President Xi talk about that every time they get together,” the ambassador said.
That sits beside a separate pause. The Trump administration held up a roughly $14 billion Taiwan weapons package amid trade talks and strain on US stockpiles tied to the wars in Iran and Ukraine.
Perdue still insisted the broader posture had not shifted.
“Our support for that has not changed,” he said. “We don’t support independence and we don’t support coercion.”
Washington has long kept a policy of strategic ambiguity on whether it would fight if China tried to seize Taiwan by force. Xi has not ruled out military action. Taiwan has refused rule by the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing still presses other countries to accept its “one China” line.
Arms were not the only hard subject. Perdue said Trump also confronted Xi over China’s support for Iran.
According to the ambassador, Xi told Trump that changes had been made and that Beijing had looked into the matter.
“President Xi assured him that changes had been made, that they were looking into it, they had looked into it,” Perdue said.
He added that some improvement is visible, yet the work is not finished.
“And we see some improvement in that. But it’s an ongoing effort that we have to make sure that they stay out of that.”
Trust remains thin for another reason. China is believed to have obtained sensitive F-35 fighter jet parts that were sent to Hong Kong, another reminder of how aggressively Beijing hunts advanced US military technology.
That backdrop makes Trump’s direct question land differently than a soft diplomatic aside. He treated weapons as leverage and commerce, not as a subject to tiptoe around while Beijing arms proxies and eyes Taiwan.
Perdue’s account puts the pattern in one frame: approved Taiwan sales measured in billions, a paused larger package under stockpile and trade pressure, a demand that China quit enabling Iran, and a blunt ask about whether Xi wanted American arms himself.
Deal-making with a rival only works when the other side hears strength first. Trump put the inventory on the table and made Beijing answer for its conduct.
