Pomp over progress in Xi’s US summit with Trump is a win for China

If the Beijing meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in May was the “stalemate summit”, the second round of talks between the presidents of the US and China this week seemed to give up entirely on the idea of breakthroughs.

Instead, it was described as a celebration of “diplotainment” rather than diplomacy, where pomp prevailed over progress and where one of the main outcomes was the news that two giant pandas would soon be sent from China to Atlanta zoo.

Trump rolled out the red carpet for Xi’s arrival on Wednesday and broke with decades of precedent to meet the Chinese leader at Joint Base Andrews. Thus began a three-day state visit that involved a tour of Trump’s new helipad and the Marine One helicopter, and a 90-minute meeting that Trump described as “great” and that revealed, according to Trump, that Xi “has great interest in granite”.

“The biggest takeaway is that Trump has been displaying an extraordinary degree of deference to Xi Jinping,” said Julian Gewirtz, who served as a senior China official in the Biden administration.

But what of actual substance? Expectations going into the summit were low. But the outcomes somehow still fell short.

One of the biggest issues in the US-China relationship is trade. Last year, as Trump unveiled successive rounds of tariffs on Chinese goods, the White House accused China of unfair practices that it said contributed to the loss of 3.7m US jobs and inflated the trade deficit. The tariffs were supposed to suppress the volume of Chinese imports to the US and put pressure on China.

To some degree, they worked. The US trade deficit with China in 2025 fell to $200bn, down from nearly $300bn in 2024. But experts have noted that some of this shortfall is made up for by Chinese goods being shipped to the US via third countries, a trend underlined by the fact that China’s trade surplus surpassed a record $1tn last year.

With the US and China accounting for 43% of global GDP, their trade war has far-reaching implications for the world economy. So it was a relief not just to Beijing and to US consumers when the two countries agreed a temporary truce in Busan last year.

That truce is due to expire in November. China, where the economy is heavily reliant on exports, was reported to be pushing for the truce to be extended until the end of Trump’s term, in January 2029.

On Thursday, it was revealed that Xi’s first state visit to the US in more than a decade had resulted in a mere two-month extension. That reflects “the lack of preparation for this summit beyond the pomp and circumstance”, said Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at the Asia Society.

William Yang, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said: “This summit largely achieved symbolism and ritualism over substance. That is very clear.” The short extension “reflects the level of fundamental differences that still exist between the two countries over a variety of issues”.

China’s most powerful response to Trump’s tariffs was the decision to block the export of rare earths, critical minerals vital to US manufacturing and military supply chains. That seemed to skewer Trump’s leverage over China.

Gewirtz said: “Beijing’s retaliation … seems to have had a profound effect on [Trump] and his administration’s willingness to take risks vis-a-vis China.”

Apart from the trade war agreement, the summit failed to achieve any meaningful progress on thorny issues in the US-China relationship such as artificial intelligence, Taiwan, the wars in Iran and Ukraine, and human rights.

On Taiwan, which Beijing considers to be the most important issue in the relationship, Xi put pressure on Trump to weaken the US’s support for the self-governing island that China claims as its own. According to the Chinese readout of the Xi-Trump meeting, Xi told Trump he hoped “the US side will adhere to the correct position of opposing Taiwan independence”.

For the US to state that it “opposes” Taiwanese independence would be a rhetorical shift from the current position of “does not support” such a claim, and would be a move welcomed by Beijing. Trump has not yet commented on whether he agreed to such a statement. But it does seem he is no closer to approving a $14bn arms sale package for Taiwan, a sale that Beijing would like to see disappear completely.

On Thursday, US Senate Democrats lambasted Trump for opting for “pageantry over purpose” and for failing to deliver agreements on “the economic and security issues that will shape America’s future”. Trump ignored recent warnings about the dangers posed by AI, writing on social media on Thursday: “I want ​to leave it exactly where it is,” adding: “That is China’s position also.”

For China, the lack of big news from the visit is a win in itself. “The summit went excellently from the Chinese perspective,” Thomas said. Xi “got a huge amount of respect from the American president, the full state visit treatment [and] really great images beaming back to China of the Chinese and the American presidents interacting as peers on the global stage, without having to make any meaningful concessions or compromises.”