Trump’s China Trip: Stability Achieved, Key Issues Frozen

Last week’s summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing produced only modest outcomes by the standards of past U.S.-China meetings, yet it delivered a clear benefit for China. After the sharp trade war of the previous year, the two nations have reverted to a state of familiar economic and strategic confrontation.

The two-day talks confirmed that, despite the tariffs Trump imposed on “Liberation Day” and the trade truce reached late last year, Washington and Beijing remain locked in the conflict Trump inherited upon returning to the White House. For the United States, this means the most dangerous issues in the relationship—particularly what Washington describes as China’s protectionist and monopolistic policies, as well as its military expansion in the Indo-Pacific—remain unresolved.

For Xi, however, the outcome provides breathing room to manage a set of largely predictable challenges. He framed the shift last week as a new framework for bilateral ties, which he termed “constructive strategic stability.”

A Fragile Trade Truce

Scott Kennedy, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said China emerged victorious given the Trump administration’s retreat from its aggressive trade posture since early 2025. “Compared to a year ago, when tariffs were at 145% and the U.S. was pushing hard for radical change from China and the rest of the world, we’ve seen a counter-revolution and returned to stability,” he explained.

Trump brought some of America’s most powerful executives to the Thursday-Friday summit, including Tesla’s Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, but most achieved little beyond attending a lavish banquet. The summit also failed to secure a public commitment from China to help the U.S. end the war in Iran, which has roiled global markets.

Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the summit showed stability but maintained the status quo. “It produced modest results that markets can absorb and handle, which is all the U.S.-China relationship can bear right now,” he noted.

Responding to a request for comment, a White House official said Trump used his positive relationship with Xi to secure concrete gains for the American people, pointing to a Boeing aircraft sale and agricultural agreements to expand U.S. exports.

Limited Economic Gains

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington described the meetings between Xi and Trump as “candid, in-depth, constructive, and strategic,” adding that they explored the best ways for the two major countries to cooperate. Analysts say Trump may have overestimated the power of tariffs to force unilateral concessions from China during last year’s trade war. Beijing retaliated by raising its own tariffs and threatening to cut off supplies of critical minerals needed by U.S. industries, leading to a tense standoff.

Since then, the White House has shown reluctance to bear the economic consequences of applying other forms of U.S. financial and technological leverage, such as sanctions on major Chinese banks. Reflecting the shift in tone, several long-standing U.S. demands—including calls for China to address industrial overcapacity that trading partners say unfairly floods markets with cheap goods—were not publicly raised last week.

China appears content with the fragile truce as it grapples with a weak domestic economy and seeks to advance technologies it hopes will shift the balance in a decades-long competition with the United States. Senior Trump administration officials downplayed the need for major breakthroughs even before the meeting, saying there was no rush to extend the trade truce, which expires in five months and was reached after talks in South Korea in October 2025.

A source familiar with the trade negotiations said China wanted a longer extension of the truce than the Trump administration was willing to grant, along with assurances about ongoing U.S. investigations that could reimpose tariffs on some imports, which the Supreme Court had invalidated this year. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks candidly, said both sides put little on the table at the summit, and some trade deals may be postponed until autumn, when Xi plans a reciprocal visit to the White House.

The summit’s trade results were limited compared to Trump’s 2017 visit to China, when companies signed deals and memorandums of understanding worth $250 billion. Last week’s meeting produced no breakthrough on Nvidia’s advanced “H200” AI chip sales to China, which may reassure China hawks in both parties who had warned the administration against supporting China’s AI development.

Although unconfirmed, Trump said Boeing secured a deal for China to purchase 200 aircraft—far fewer than the 500 expected and the 300 planes Beijing agreed to buy during the 2017 visit. The White House official said the U.S. established a new trade council, described by American officials as a joint mechanism to reduce tariffs on non-sensitive goods, but provided few details.

Wendy Cutler, former acting deputy U.S. trade representative, described the economic gains as “far below expectations.” Chu Shulong, a professor of international affairs at Renmin University in Beijing, said the meetings were a positive step for China toward realistic competition. He added that the summit showed Washington and Beijing “no longer aspire to return to a cooperative golden age of Sino-U.S. relations, but instead acknowledge the long-term nature of competition and disagreement.”