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Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One, Oct. 27, 2025

October 27, 2025 · The White House · 0:33:32

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What happened

President Donald Trump took questions on Air Force One on October 27, 2025, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo, joined by Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. On the previous day’s meeting with President Lula of Brazil, he said: “Very good. We had a good meeting… They’d like to do a deal. We’ll see. Right now, they’re paying, I guess, 50% tariff.” On China, Secretary Bessent said he and Ambassador Greer had met their counterpart, the Vice Premier, and had “a framework for President Trump, President Xi to decide on,” covering “tariffs, trade, fentanyl, substantial purchase of U.S. agricultural products, and rare earths,” as he stated the agenda. The President said a TikTok approval might come at Thursday’s meeting, that he planned to visit China “in the earlier part of the year,” with President Xi to visit the United States after, and that Ambassador Greer’s Section 301 review of China’s phase-one compliance “may be a part of the talk… I have a feeling they’ll talk us out of that,” as he stated it.

On Canada, the President said the Reagan-ad dispute would delay any meeting with Prime Minister Carney — “I don’t want to meet with him. No, I’m not going to be meeting with him for a while… I’m very happy with the deal we have right now with Canada. We’re going to let it ride.” On the Federal Reserve chair search, Secretary Bessent said the field was “down to five,” with a second round of interviews and a slate to be presented to the President “right after Thanksgiving”; asked to name the five, he listed Waller, Hassett, Warsh, Rieder, and Bowman, as he stated the names. The President joked that he was considering Secretary Bessent, Secretary Rubio, Ambassador Greer, and Stephen Miller. On Russia’s missile test, he said: “They know we have a nuclear submarine, the greatest in the world, right off their shores… he ought to get the war ended. A war that should have taken one week is now in its soon fourth year.” On the Navy’s Nimitz incidents — a fighter jet and a helicopter lost the same day — he said: “It could be bad fuel… We’re going to find out. Nothing to hide.”

On South Korea, Secretary Bessent said there was no snag: “a very complicated deal, and I think we’re very close,” and Ambassador Greer described the pieces — national-security issues, resolved non-tariff barriers, and Korean investment in U.S. shipbuilding. The President defended bringing foreign experts in to staff new factories after the Georgia raid: “They’ve got to bring people in with them for a period of time. They’ll teach our people how to do it… it’ll be a phase out, a slow phase out,” as he stated the policy. On Argentina, he celebrated President Milei’s election result — “he had a lot of help from us. I gave him a very strong endorsement” — and Secretary Bessent said the election “made a lot of money for the United States because the bonds have gone up,” as he stated it, calling the U.S. support “a bridge” the market would carry from here. On North Korea, the President said he had not reached out to Kim Jong-un but “I’d love to meet with him if he’d like to meet… I would do that, sure,” including extending the trip; “we have sanctions. That’s pretty big to start off with.” On the shutdown’s air traffic controllers, he said the Democrats “can solve that problem… All they have to do is say the country’s open. We only need five votes.” Secretary Rubio, asked about an Israeli strike on Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said it was not a ceasefire violation: “Israel didn’t surrender its right to self-defense… we’d also like to see Hamas speed up the return of hostage bodies. We still have 13 hostages, two Americans included,” as he stated the figures.

Why it matters

This is the Asia trip’s mid-flight state of play in the principals’ own words — the China framework’s five-part agenda two days before Busan, the Fed chair field named at five with a post-Thanksgiving decision slate, the Korea deal’s structure, and the foreign-expert visa policy — the briefing against which the week’s signings, paged in this chronicle, were delivered.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the China framework agenda (tariffs, fentanyl, agricultural purchases, rare earths) as stated October 27, 2025, ahead of the October 30 Busan meeting; the Federal Reserve chair slate timing (five candidates; presentation after Thanksgiving); and the Korea framework’s shipbuilding-investment piece. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One, Oct. 27, 2025” (official upload, embedded above). Remarks and figures as delivered in the gaggle.