President Trump will host Chinese leader Xi Jinping for a lavish state visit to Washington this week, but behind the pageantry, the two leaders will face off across a negotiating table crowded with disputes.
The agenda for their sit-down Thursday at the White House is packed with contentious issues, including tariffs, rare earth minerals, Taiwan, artificial intelligence and a growing military rivalry between the world’s two most powerful nations.
The state visit also comes at a politically fraught moment for Mr. Trump, who is looking for economic victories ahead of the midterm elections. As his trade war with Canada ramps up, the president wants to keep his fragile trade truce with Beijing from collapsing.
Mr. Xi, meanwhile, arrives in Washington with some leverage – his country’s domination of the rare earths market, vital to U.S. manufacturers and the Pentagon. He is not looking for anything tangible but rather how to keep the uneasy relationship with the U.S. functional, buy time and see if the American political landscape shifts in November.
That puts both presidents in a position where they have reasons to make a deal, but have to be careful not to give away too much. They could be satisfied walking away with an agreement to maintain the status quo.
“It’s a summit about managing a stalemate, not resolving it,” said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Mr. Trump wants China to guarantee access to critical minerals, buy more American agricultural products and make further progress reducing the flow of chemicals into the U.S.
Beijing wants relief from U.S. tariffs and technology restrictions and assurances that Washington will escalate the trade war once the summit is over.
Taiwan security
Hovering over all of that is Taiwan, the self-governing breakaway province that is armed by the U.S. but claimed by China as its territory.
U.S. allies in Asia are watching closely for any signal that Mr. Trump could alter Washington’s stance on Taiwan, which is also a major financial hub and the world’s top maker of microprocessing chips.
A top priority for Mr. Xi is persuading his U.S. counterpart to keep delaying $14 billion in proposed arms sales to Taiwan. Mr. Trump has delayed the package since Congress approved it in January.
Mr. Xi could press for concessions on Taiwan in exchange for handing Mr. Trump a win on trade or other economic issues.
“Whether Trump makes concessions on Taiwan depends on what Xi offers in exchange,” said Jim Lewis of the Center for European Policy Analysis. “It’s hard to see what he could offer that would be both credible and sufficient to justify concessions by the U.S. So I think this is managing a course that we know is pretty well plotted out.”
Trade, tariffs and rare earth
A tariff truce reached between Washington and Beijing expires Nov. 10. Officials from both countries spent the days before Mr. Xi’s visit negotiating to avoid the economic relationship from sliding back towards confrontation.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng conducted preparatory talks in New York on Sunday to set up potential agreements on non-sensitive trade topics.
Rare earths could emerge as the clearest tests of which leader has the stronger bargaining hand.
Beijing’s control over rare earths has become a potent counterweight to U.S. economic pressure. Rare earths are essential to automobiles, electronics and sophisticated weapons systems. China dominates the supply chain for rare earth at every stage, controlling 90% of the market.
China has repeatedly used its dominance over rare earths as leverage, including placing export restrictions on U.S. companies it says have ties to the military. It then ramped up those restrictions by limiting any product with a trace of Chinese rare earth content, a move aimed at bolstering its leverage.
Rare earth shipments from China are at their lowest levels since the COVID-19 pandemic.
China also restricted its rare earth exports to Japan in a bid to deter its support for Taiwan in a potential military conflict.
“The real test [of the summit] is going to be after Xi leaves. Do rare earth shipments improve? Do the economic commitments actually get implemented?” Mr. Singleton said.
Mr. Trump could emerge from the summit with a targeted agreement that carries political value at home, such as additional agricultural purchases from China. Beijing purchased roughly 1 million tons of American soybeans earlier this year. Any additional commitment to purchase U.S. farm products would give Mr. Trump an economic win for farmers and rural voters. It could also help soothe a traditionally reliable GOP demographic angry over Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
“In agriculture and in trade, the president and the White House will probably be thinking about what are the implications for the midterms, so a nice commitment on the soybean or further commitment [would help],” said Mr. Lewis, the policy analyst. “The midterms are a focus whether we like it or not.”
Artificial intelligence race
AI adds another layer of tension to the Trump-Xi meeting as both nations compete for technological supremacy, and both countries eye safeguards to prevent the rapidly advancing learning machines from going rogue and triggering a global crisis.
When Mr. Bessent and Mr. He met on Sunday, they discussed creating a mechanism for the two countries to notify each other about major AI incidents. That proposal could be part of a broader U.S.-China dialogue on AI safety on Thursday.
Plans for cooperation, however, come amid an intensifying race for AI leadership.
American officials generally maintained that U.S. systems remain ahead, but Chinese developers have rapidly narrowed the gap and become particularly competitive in open-weight AI models.
The two governments have sharply different takes on the threat of AI. In the U.S., the chief fear is AI killing off the human race. In China, the chief fear is AI killing off the CCP.
Mr. Trump has resisted calls for tough federal regulations, arguing that it would cede power to China. Beijing, meanwhile, has imposed rules governing algorithms, training data and AI-generated content.
The White House guest list for Thursday night’s state dinner includes tech heavyweights such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Apple’s Tim Cook, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and SpaceX’s Elon Musk.
Aalok Mehta, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there are a lot of incentives for China and the U.S. to have substantive discussions on AI policy.
“There will be some discussion about both technical and governance tools that could allow information to be shared without necessarily relying just on sort of verbal statements from officials,” he said.
Allegations of China stealing U.S. technology have long been a flashpoint. The U.S. this month accused six Chinese companies of copying American AI technology.
The U.S. is considering restricting Beijing’s ability to remotely access data centers in other countries to block them from stealing Nvidia’s advanced chips. Mr. Trump has largely supported Nvidia selling computer chips to China and other nations, relaxing restrictions put in place by the Biden administration.
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