Trump welcomes China’s leader ahead of vital Washington summit

US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping during an arrival ceremony at Joint Base Andrews (Alex Brandon/AP)

Donald Trump and Xi Jinping will sit down for talks on Thursday at the White House after the US president welcomed China’s leader for a state visit.

China has resisted the Trump administration’s urgings – and economic threats – to use its considerable leverage to prod Iran to agree to US terms to end the nearly seven-month war.

Mr Xi wants to see Mr Trump permanently halt arms sales to Taiwan and loosen export restrictions on cutting-edge advanced chips.

And the two sides on Wednesday agreed to extend a one-year trade truce set to expire on November 10 for two months, kicking the can on finding a more durable agreement.

All the while, both leaders seem to believe that time is on their side as they look to outmanoeuvre the other in what is expected to be the world’s most significant economic and national security competition for years to come.

“The president very much believes that over time the US economy is going to grow, the US will get stronger, the US will keep making advances in AI and on technology, and that … the US will develop alternative sources of critical minerals and rare earths,” said Edgard Kagan, a former senior State Department official handling East Asia policy issues under Mr Trump and former president Joe Biden.

“I think when Xi Jinping sits down with Donald Trump, he very much believes the US is in hurtling decline and that time is on China’s side.”

Mr Trump, for his part, is going all in on the pomp for the state visit for Mr Xi.

In a grand gesture, the Republican leader kicked off the visit by personally greeting Mr Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, upon their arrival on Wednesday evening.

Mr Trump’s decision to greet Mr Xi at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington rather than receiving him at the executive residence shows how far the US president is going to honour China’s leader as he made his first state visit to the US capital for more than a decade.

Mr Trump has made clear he wants to impress Mr Xi with the visit, making sure construction of a new helicopter landing pad on the White House’s South Lawn was completed ahead of the visit.

He has also openly lamented that his planned White House ballroom is not ready for a state dinner in Mr Xi’s honour on Thursday evening.

The guest list includes Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, among other tech titans staking out positions on whether more safeguards are needed in the race to develop artificial intelligence – an issue of critical importance to both leaders.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two leaders may be open to a new “notification mechanism” for AI incidents that could affect national security. But on AI and a host of other thorny issues, it remains unclear whether the leaders can make progress.

Shortly after Mr Xi’s arrival in Washington on Wednesday, Mr Bessent announced on Fox News that the two sides had come to terms on extending the trade truce, forged last year in Busan, South Korea. He said it is possible that Mr Trump and Mr Xi could come to a larger agreement by January or just decide to once again extend it further.

Mr Trump and Mr Xi have incentive to keep the truce alive. Mr Trump’s Republican Party is facing headwinds as they try to maintain control of Congress in November’s midterm elections and can hardly afford further economic disruption.

Meanwhile, Mr Xi is navigating an uneven Chinese economy – one in which its domestic economy is struggling while its high tech exports remain strong.

Peak baseline US tariffs reached 145% during last year’s trade battle – matched by China’s reciprocal levies of 125%.

After Mr Trump and Mr Xi met in South Korea last year, the average US tariff rate fell to roughly 47%, while China charged an average in the mid-30s. But in February, the US Supreme Court overturned many of Mr Trump’s tariffs, causing the taxes on Chinese goods to have more variation.

The stopgap announced by Mr Bessent was shorter than what both sides had suggested in recent weeks.

The Chinese side had indicated that they wanted to see the trade truce extended until the end of Mr Trump’s term in January 2029.

Meanwhile, Trump administration officials had suggested a three to six-month extension as a more appropriate timeframe because China has been slow to fulfil past commitments on rare earth exports as well as imports of US soybeans and aircraft.

There might not be a breakthrough during this week’s visit but both leaders seem to be determined to avoid a breakdown, said Ryan Hass, a senior China policy adviser in former president Barack Obama’s administration.

“Both sides are going to be managing for small gains and conflict avoidance, and that is going to be sort of the spirit through which both leaders approach this conversation,” said Mr Hass, who is now at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Mr Trump has argued to little effect that China, which is far more dependent on Gulf oil than the US, has plenty of incentive to use its sway with Tehran to help force an end to the conflict.

But Mr Trump’s war of choice has unnerved Beijing, with the government condemning the US and Israeli military action and Mr Xi expressing concerns the conflict signalled a return to what he called the “law of the jungle.”

The Chinese were also unsettled by the military operation Mr Trump ordered to oust Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro from power and sweep him off to New York City to face federal narcoterrorism and drug trafficking charges.

Mr Trump has since pressured Latin American nations to reduce economic and political ties with China – and justified a push for US involvement in Venezuela’s oil industry by pointing to concerns about Chinese and Russian influence on the South American country.

“China is very nervous about the kind of 19th-century imperialist cast of geopolitics that Trump has been pursuing,” said Jake Werner, director of the East Asia Programme at the Quincy Institute.

“But at the same time, Beijing really sees the US-China relationship as the decisive factor. They don’t want to move in a way that’s going to blow up the US relationship.”

China has made clear it views Taiwan as the most sensitive issue in the US-China relationship.

Beijing considers Taiwan to be Chinese territory and vows to annex the island by force if necessary. The US is obligated by law to provide Taiwan with sufficient hardware to deter any armed attack from the mainland.

China has pressed Washington to permanently halt the arms sales, most prominently when Mr Trump and Mr Xi met in Beijing in May.

After that meeting, Mr Trump said he was holding off on final approval for a record-breaking 14 billion-dollar arms package that was in the pipeline. He also described arms sales to Taiwan as a “very good negotiating chip” with China.

The US president may be motivated to keep the pause on until at least the end of the year, analysts say.

Mr Trump, who sees face-to-face meetings with Mr Xi as a key part in maintaining stability in the relationship, wants the Chinese president to attend the Group of 20 summit in December at his resort in Florida.

Mr Xi, meanwhile, wants Mr Trump to attend November’s Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Shenzhen, China.

“I think that keeping things where they are now, with the arms sales pushed off, would count as a win for Beijing,” Mr Hass said.