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Current Affairs

Trump softens tone on alleged China election meddling before Rubio-Wang talks

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Manila on Wednesday, as President Donald Trump signalled that Washington would…

By Samantha Johnson / July 21, 2026
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Manila on Wednesday, as President Donald Trump signalled that Washington would confront Beijing over its alleged interference in the 2020 election but played down the prospect of retaliation.

“We’re going to talk to them about it,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday, adding that the alleged interference “took place a long time ago” and that China might be “a little bit different today than it was then”.

“They do things to us and we do things to them,” Trump said. “I’ll be honest, we do things to them too. It’s not a one-way street, but we’ll be talking to them.”

People familiar with the planning told the South China Morning Post that the meeting between Rubio and Yi is expected to take place on Wednesday in the Philippines’ capital on the sidelines of meetings involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The talks will come less than a week after Trump accused China of carrying out what he described as the “largest compromise of election data in history”, alleging in a televised address that Beijing had illicitly obtained over 200 million US voter records.

China has rejected the allegations. Its embassy in Washington said Beijing adhered to the “principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs”.

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