The summit ended as it started – with Donald Trump raining lavish praise on his guest. The meeting was one of ‘Friendship, Strength and Success’ he boasted on Truth Social. It had been ‘very productive’ and ‘tremendous things will be happening’. Over two days of pageantry, he called his guest ‘spectacular’, ‘outstanding’ and ‘amazing’, and said that China was ‘legendary’.
It has quickly provoked a growing backlash among Republican senators, for whom it was simply way over the top – even by Trump’s standards. ‘Is it appropriate that you welcome him? Yeah. But it’s equally appropriate that you ask him really tough questions,’ said Senator Lisa Murowski, concerned about China’s military cooperation with Iran, including the provision of satellite imagery to help target US forces. ‘We need to clarify who our friends are and who our enemies are,’ said Senator John Curtis.
Trump was asked about Iran by reporters during a brief tour of the National Archives to show Xi Jinping America’s founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It had been discussed, he said, without giving any details. He preferred to concentrate on their longer term histories. ‘Ours goes 250 years. Which is great, and we’re proud of. Theirs goes 6,000 years. So there’s a little difference between 6,000 and 250. But we’re very proud of our 250,’ he said.
Earlier Trump and his wife Melania had welcomed Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan to the White House for tea, ignoring shouted questions about whether he had asked Xi to stop buying Iranian oil. ‘I think we’ve made great strides’, he insisted, once they were inside. While the Chinese president said: ‘The president and I are like two people charting the course for the great ship of China and US relations.’
Xi added that he and Trump had agreed to add ‘new substance’ to their relationship, but that is hard to spot. Seasoned diplomats will often tell you that that there is an inverse relationship between the level of pageantry and platitudes at a summit meeting and the amount of actual substance, and this would appear to be a classic of that genre. It could be argued that the biggest achievement is that the summit took place at all, given their differences – ranging from China’s support for Iran and Russia to Taiwan, trade and the artificial intelligence race.
Even as the two men spoke, a criminal trial of Huawei, China’s technology champion, was unfolding in New York, the company accused of theft, fraud and sanctions violations. It denies the charges, but prosecutors claim the company is a criminal enterprise, and the evidence presented is fuelling arguments that China’s rise was built on theft – a multi-decade heist of American technology.
Yet Trump did hand Xi one major win in significantly elevating the global standing of America’s biggest rival. Symbolism is incredibly important to Xi, who craves status and whose has long wanted to be treated as an equal to the United States. Trump handed that to him in spades. There was barely a word of criticism, differences were muted, threadbare achievements hyped, praise lavished.
As Xi’s aircraft left for China, a little more details was emerging of the few tangible agreements. A two month extension of a trade truce is being presented as a ‘bridge’ to a bigger deal in January, though there remains deep distrust. Officials accuse China of cheating – breaking the current truce by continuing to impose selective restrictions on rare earth exports. Details of a new trade management system and what items will be exempt from scrutiny remain a work in progress and Beijing continues to push for more concessions on the purchase of advanced US technology.
Distrust also undermines any progress on AI guardrails. Both sides see the technology as a race for the future, with neither showing an appetite to tame or slow it. There is talk of a ‘notification system’, a sort of hotline for exchanging critical information if things go haywire. It’s not clear how this would work, though it should inspire plenty of comedy sketches – ‘Mr President, just to let you know our latest model is out to destroy mankind, you’ve got 10 minutes. Sorry for the inconvenience’.
Notable by his absence from the top table at the banquet for Xi was the CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei, who to Trump’s annoyance has been the most forthright of AI bosses in his warnings about the potential threat to humanity and the need for ‘responsible’ AI. He’s also warned that China leading the AI race would pose a ‘grave danger’ to the US and to the world. He has also accused major Chinese labs of training their models off the output of expensively developed US models – a process known as distillation. It’s not clear whether he chose not to attend or simply was not invited, his message not regarded as the stuff of polite conversation with the Chinese leader.
Chinese state media reported that Xi advised Trump to handle ‘with prudence’ his approach to Taiwan, with China claims as its own and has threatened to take by force. There was no read-out from the White House. The US is obliged by law to provide Taiwan with weapons sufficient for its defence, but Trump has delayed approving a $14bn (£11bn) arms package for the island, which he has described as a ‘very good negotiating chip’ with Beijing, much to the consternation of Taipei, which fears the US president selling it out in exchange for a broader deal with Beijing.
Top US senators called on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to release the money. Rubio suggested that the hold-up was not so much political as one of industrial capacity – that the US simply didn’t have enough after exhausting (and diverting) stocks in the Iran war.
Shortly after Xi departed from Washington, Trump confirmed that would be attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, in November and that Xi Jinping would be coming to the Group of 20 summit in Florida in December. ‘I look forward to our next meeting!’ Trump wrote on social media.
With so many potential conflicts and pitfalls, perhaps a superficial mountain of bonhomie and fudge was the best that could have been hoped for from this summit. No doubt more details will emerge over the coming days, but there appears to have been little visible progress, little of substance on the many things that divide them – though at least Atlanta Zoo gets two new pandas.
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