Trump floated the prospect of meeting Kim Jong Un in person during an upcoming tour of several Asian nations scheduled for next month. Speaking with reporters on the South Lawn before departing for Manila and Shenzhen, Trump indicated that a potential meeting with the North Korean leader remained under active consideration. No specifics about when, where, or how a possible meeting might be arranged were put forward by Trump.

Broadcast reports indicate that the president's forthcoming tour of East Asia will encompass both group-format talks and one-on-one meetings with regional counterparts. On November 16, a scheduled appearance at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Manila will bring Trump to the Philippine capital. A three-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering in Shenzhen, China — running from 17 to 19 November — sits on the president's itinerary once his Manila commitments wrap up.

Scheduled for the margins of the APEC forum in Shenzhen, a face-to-face encounter between Trump and Xi Jinping would mark their third formal exchange at that level within the calendar year, with trade imbalances, regional security arrangements, and stability across the Pacific all listed among the topics on the table.

At a press briefing held in August, Trump told reporters he anticipated a face-to-face encounter with Kim Jong Un before the year 2026 drew to a close, offering an unambiguous affirmative when a journalist put the question to him directly. Unnamed officials with knowledge of the matter told a news outlet in August that arrangements for an autumn meeting were being pursued at the direction of the president, with the APEC conference in Shenzhen put forward as a potential venue. Preliminary talks have continued behind closed doors, yet no confirmed timetable or meeting location has been put forward by either side.

Three diplomatic encounters during Donald Trump's initial White House tenure form the backdrop to a potential new round of talks. At a Singapore gathering in June 2018, Trump and the North Korean leader held talks that no sitting president had previously conducted, wrapping up with a jointly signed declaration backing the removal of nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula. At the Hanoi summit in February 2019 — the pair's second in-person encounter — the two sides found no path through the gap separating demands for sanctions relief from expectations of nuclear disarmament, and the meeting concluded without a formal agreement in place.

At Panmunjom in June 2019, Trump stepped over the military demarcation line dividing the two Koreas, becoming the first person to hold the presidency of the United States to set foot on North Korean soil while in office. Talks aimed at reducing weapons stockpiles have made little headway in the period following that border incident, a stretch that has also seen North Korea advance its long-range ballistic missile programme and broaden the scale of its uranium enrichment activities.