U.S. President Donald Trump touched down in Beijing on Wednesday for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping that will test whether the two superpowers can manage a raft of economic and security flashpoints. The Chinese government rolled out a red-carpet welcome at the airport, where Vice President Han Zheng, Ambassador Xie Feng and other senior officials greeted Trump alongside a military honor guard and hundreds of youths waving flags and chanting “Welcome, welcome! Warm welcome!”
The leaders’ formal talks are scheduled for Thursday, when they will hold bilateral meetings and later visit the Temple of Heaven and attend a banquet. Trump projected confidence before leaving Washington, declaring “We’re the two superpowers” and that the United States remains “the strongest nation on Earth in terms of military,” but the visit unfolds at a delicate moment for his presidency. Public support has been weighed down by the U.S.-led war with Iran and the inflation it has stoked, and Trump is seeking tangible deals that could ease domestic political pressure.
“We have a lot of things to discuss. I wouldn’t say Iran is one of them, to be honest with you, because we have Iran very much under control,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. Yet the conflict’s economic toll is unmistakable: effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has stranded tankers and sent energy prices surging, threatening global growth. China’s stance on the war remains independent; Iran’s foreign minister was in Beijing just last week, and Xi has not publicly committed to a mediating role.
Trade, which Trump said he would address “more than anything else,” is central to the White House strategy. The administration hopes to begin building a Board of Trade to address differences and prevent a return to the tariff war that erupted after Trump’s previous hikes and China’s retaliatory rare-earth-mineral controls. A one-year truce reached last October is in effect, but the framework remains fragile. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng at Incheon International Airport, near Seoul, on Wednesday to discuss economic and trade issues, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
Trump traveled to Beijing with a coterie of aides, family members and business leaders including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk. While en route, he posted on social media that his “first request” to Xi would be to “open up” China to U.S. firms. “I will be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to ‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic, and help bring the People’s Republic to an even higher level!,” Trump wrote.
Taiwan will be a major topic, with China displeased over a $11 billion U.S. arms package approved in December but not yet delivered — the largest ever approved for the self-governing island. Trump acknowledged he would discuss the package with Xi but has shown ambivalence on Taiwan, raising questions over whether he could scale back support for the democracy that is also the world’s leading chipmaker. Hours before his arrival, the Chinese Communist Party’s newspaper People’s Daily published an editorial stating Taiwan is “the first red line that cannot be crossed in China-U.S. relations” and is “the biggest point of risk” between the two nations.
China enters the meeting from “a much stronger place,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser on Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Even if Beijing gets little on tech restrictions or tariffs, “as long as there’s not a blow-up in the meeting and President Trump doesn’t go away and look to re-escalate, China basically comes out stronger,” Kennedy said.
Trump also plans to raise the idea of a three-way nuclear arms pact that would set limits on the arsenals of the United States, China and Russia, a senior administration official told reporters on condition of anonymity. China has previously been cool to such a deal; its arsenal exceeds 600 operational warheads, far short of the more than 5,000 held by both Washington and Moscow, according to Pentagon estimates. The last nuclear arms agreement between the U.S. and Russia, the New START treaty, expired in February, leaving no caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than fifty years.
Trump was already portraying the trip as a success before leaving the White House, musing about Xi’s planned reciprocal visit later this year and lamenting that a renovation of the White House ballroom would not be finished in time to host the Chinese leader. “We’re going to have a great relationship for many, many decades to come,” he said.