Donald Trump on Thursday challenged Xi Jinping to rebalance their countries’ “out-of-kilter” economic relationship and “quickly” fix the impasse over North Korea’s nuclear and missile development programmes.

“Trade between China and the US has not been over recent years very fair for the US,” the US president said after a morning of meetings with his Chinese counterpart. “We must immediately address the unfair practices that drove [our trade] deficit along with barriers to market access.”

Mr Trump also thanked Mr Xi for China’s recent efforts to restrict its trading and financial relationships with North Korea — although he implied that Beijing could do more. “China can fix this [North Korea] problem easily and quickly,” Mr Trump said to an audience of US and Chinese officials and business executives. “I know one thing about your president, if he works on it hard it will happen. There’s no doubt about it.”