Pacific leaders, including China’s President Xi Jinping, have converged in South Korea this week for a significant summit. Notably missing from the event, however, is former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump’s decision to forgo attending the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which represents nations responsible for over half of global trade, has allowed Xi to take center stage. During the summit, Xi engaged in prominent discussions with Japan’s new leader, Sanae Takaichi, and Mark Carney from Canada.

Even in his absence, Trump’s influence is felt through his protectionist trade policies and the imposition of global tariffs, casting a shadow over the two-day gathering in Gyeongju.

Representing the United States in Trump’s place is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is participating in the ongoing discussions.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is standing in for Trump during the discussions.

In his opening remarks to the forum, Xi called for unity and cooperation between the grouping of 21 economies on both sides of the Pacific.

“The world is undergoing rapid changes unseen in a century,” Xi told the forum.

“The more turbulent the times are, the more we must stand together in solidarity.”

“China’s door to openness will not close; it will only open wider,” Xi said.

Decisions made in Gyeongju are non-binding — and leaders have faced difficulty reaching consensus in the past including on thorny issues like Russia’s war in Ukraine.

But a major focus for the forum this year is on strengthening supply chains and encouraging cooperation as economies worldwide reel from Trump’s tariff offensive.

“We are standing at a critical inflection point with a rapidly changing global economic order,” South Korean president and APEC chair Lee Jae Myung said in his address to the summit on Friday.

“As the free trade order undergoes dramatic changes, global economic uncertainty is deepening, and trade and investment are losing momentum.”

Lee said that “only cooperation and solidarity can surely lead us to a better future.”

In Japan, Trump and freshly appointed Prime Minister Takaichi embarked on a “new golden age” of relations and signed a critical minerals agreement.

On Friday, Xi met Japan’s Takaichi, a staunch conservative who has criticized China’s growing military presence in the region and called for cooperation with Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.

Xi told Takaichi that China was ready to “work with Japan for constructive, stable bilateral ties that meet requirements of the new era,” Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.

“I aim to maintain communication with you and therefore jointly promote the development of China-Japan relations along the right track,” Xi said.

She told reporters after the meeting that China and Japan agreed to build a “strategic mutually beneficial relationship.”

But Takaichi said she also expressed concerns to Xi on sensitive issues including Chinese export controls on rare earths, China’s activity in the East China Sea, and the detention of Japanese nationals in China.

“I also asked China to resume Japanese beef and seafood imports,” she said.

Takaichi and Trump demonstrated a close bond complete with smiles, fist pumps and jokes.

For Canadian Prime Minister Carney, who is involved in an escalating trade war with Trump, meeting with Xi marked a “turning point” in their relationship, according to his office.

In an earlier speech that echoed Xi and Lee’s addresses to APEC, Carney told the forum that the world was “facing another hinge moment in history.”

“Our world is undergoing one of the most profound shifts since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” he said.

“That old world… of steady expansion of liberalized trade and investment… that world is gone.”

Carney and Xi “affirmed their commitment to renewing the relationship between their two countries in a pragmatic and constructive way” and discussed a framework “to deepen cooperation across a range of areas – from clean and conventional energy, to agriculture, manufacturing, climate change, and international finance,” the prime minister’s office said.

Carney also accepted an invitation to visit China and both leaders “directed their officials to move quickly to resolve outstanding trade issues and irritants.”

Xi will sit down for talks with South Korea’s Lee on Saturday, in the first summit meeting between the two leaders.

On the agenda are discussions on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and regional peace and stability.

Ahead of that meeting, North Korea called talks about denuclearization a “pipedream” that will never be realised.

The country’s Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong Ho accused South Korea of lacking “common sense” for refusing to acknowledge Pyongyang as a nuclear-armed state, and pursuing what he called a “daydream” of denuclearization, the state-run Korea Central News Agency reported.