WASHINGTON, September 26 — The red carpet is rolled up, the three-day Washington summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping is over, and what it produced fits in a single sentence. The two leaders agreed to extend a trade truce by two months. It had been set to expire in November.
That was the biggest policy announcement of the visit, according to an Associated Press report, which described the summit as heavy on pomp and light on substance. Trump delighted in the personal rapport he says he has built with Xi.
Xi struck a more formal note, saying the two sides “must hold the line” to ensure there is “no conflict and no confrontation between us.”
A remarkable turn from a tariff war
The warmth is striking given where these two stood less than a year ago. The U.S. and China were locked in a tariff battle that threatened to send the global economy into a recession. Only China and Canada fought back against Trump’s tariffs last year with retaliatory tariffs of their own.
The two have since received very different treatment from the White House. Trump has been deferential to Xi while raging against Ottawa and Prime Minister Mark Carney.
He has announced 50% tariffs on some Canadian imports and a ban on some Canadian products, including motorcycles and alcohol. The ban takes effect Tuesday. He even posted an image of himself in a U.S. hockey uniform, looming over Carney cowering on the ice.
Former U.S. trade official Jeff Moon said the explanation is simple. “Trump is a bully who enjoys punching down when he can but will stop when he can’t,” said Moon, noting Canada sends about 70% of its exports to the U.S. Trump eased up on China last year when Beijing cut off supplies of critical minerals needed for advanced manufacturing.
“Punching down was no longer possible,” said Moon, the founder of China Moon Strategies.
AI, Iran and Taiwan on the table
The leaders are facing calls to collaborate on guardrails for artificial intelligence even as they compete to dominate the rapidly developing technology. Xi acknowledged that the U.S. and China have the “responsibility to develop and manage AI for good” while ensuring it remains under human control. Trump appears more focused on his push to rebrand artificial intelligence to “super intelligence,” claiming on social media Friday that Xi “seems to like” the term without divulging the substance of their discussions.
Trump, a Republican, has repeatedly said that he doesn’t want to impede the industry and that the U.S. must ensure an edge over China. The leaders also delved into the Iran war, which Trump is struggling to wind down.
China urged Washington and Tehran to return to talks and an interim deal, but Iran’s largest trading partner has played no major public role in pushing for peace despite its outsize influence. The costs of the war — including higher gasoline prices and dwindling stockpiles of advanced weapons — are hurting Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections. In their private talks, Xi told Trump he hoped the U.S. will “adhere to the correct position of opposing” the independence of Taiwan, a self-governed island, according to an official Chinese statement.
Trump hasn’t said much yet about his private conversations with Xi. But Taiwan’s foreign ministry said the Chinese statement was “distorting” the facts, while underscoring that Taiwan’s sovereignty belongs to its people.
The Chinese government’s choice of the word “adhere” is revealing, because it implies Beijing believes Washington is already behaving in ways it wants, says Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Beijing’s objective is to get Trump to absorb Chinese red lines into his own definition of a stable relationship,” Singleton added. What to watch next: whether the two-month truce extension holds past its new deadline, and whether Trump says anything publicly about what Xi told him on Taiwan.
