Big promises, thin results from Trump’s China trip

BEIJING — U.S. President Donald Trump seemed very pleased with all that he and Chinese leader Xi Jinping discussed during his two-day trip.

But how much they actually agreed to is unclear.

During a Friday briefing with reporters on Air Force One en route back to the U.S. from Beijing, Trump revealed few substantive agreements while suggesting that at Xi’s behest he was rethinking a key element of U.S. relations with Taiwan.

Trump provided no details of a potential U.S. sale of soybeans to China beyond a vague assertion that China would buy “billions of dollars” worth.

He touted the sale of 200 Boeing aircraft to China but that was less than half of what some analysts and investors had expected. Beijing didn’t confirm either agreement and Boeing did not respond when asked to confirm the sale. Trump also confirmed that he and Xi had discussed “possibly working together for guard rails” on the development and application of artificial intelligence systems.

And despite repeated assurances from White House officials that U.S. policy toward Taiwan would not be on the summit agenda, Trump said that the two leaders had discussed U.S. ties to the island at length. Trump told reporters he was willing to reconsider U.S. arms sales to the self-governing island — a key longtime demand of Beijing — despite long-standing U.S. commitments to provide defensive weaponry to deter potential Chinese aggression.

“I’ll make a determination over the next fairly short period,” Trump said when asked if he’ll continue arms sales to the island. Trump added that he would speak to “the person who is running Taiwan” — an apparent reference to Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te — as part of that decision-making process.

The “Monumental Event” that Trump pitched does not appear to have materialized, leaving in its place a fragile but stable trade truce. Still, that’s a far cry from the all-out trade war that broke out a year ago, and the Trump administration walked away from the meeting having accomplished its broad goal of preserving the status quo — one that leaves tariffs on Chinese goods at around the same rate as the rest of the world.

“The summit produced modest, marketable and managed outcomes, which is about all the U.S.-China relationship can bear right now,” said Craig Singleton, a China fellow at the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

Whether Trump would revisit arms sales to Taiwan remains uncertain, but he was clear that he does not feel bound by a 1982 pledge former President Ronald Reagan made to the island that it wouldn’t consult with Beijing on weapons sales to Taiwan.

“So what am I going to do?” Trump said. “Say ‘I don’t want to talk to you about it?’ Because I have an agreement that was signed in 1982? No, we discussed arms sales.”

Taiwan had emerged as a flashpoint during the meeting, with Xi warning Trump that mishandling of the island, which China considers part of its territory, could lead to “clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.”

Trump has delayed signing off on $14 billion worth of arms sales to Taiwan, but this was the first indication that he has discussed the matter with Xi.

“An actual kind of haggling or horse trading on arms sales, or a consultation on what we would or would not sell — that would be a break with precedent if that is something that the Chinese asked for, and something that the president is willing to grant,” said David Sacks, a former political-military expert at the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Taiwan.

Taiwan’s diplomatic outpost in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment.

While Trump appeared willing to bend to Xi’s sensitivities on Taiwan, the Chinese leader offered no indication that he would use his influence to address one of Trump’s key concerns — Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. A White House readout of their meeting Thursday said the two leaders agreed that the Strait of Hormuz should be open to shipping and that no country should impose “tolls” for passage through the strait. A Chinese readout of the meeting said only that the two leaders discussed “the Middle East situation.”

Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he hadn’t asked for Xi’s help in pressuring Tehran to open the Strait.

“I don’t need favors,” Trump said of that decision. He then added that he believes Xi will apply pressure on Tehran to stop blocking the strait because “He’d like to see it opened up.”

Trump also hit a wall on other key irritants in the U.S. China relationship. Xi parried Trump’s concern about Chinese cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure by talking “about attacks that we did in China,” Trump told reporters. Trump was also apparently unable to push Xi into taking more action to stem the flow of Chinese precursor chemicals to Mexico that cartels process into fentanyl. Trump said he raised the issue but pivoted to saying that the fentanyl-related tariffs he’d imposed on Chinese imports had reduced fentanyl flows into the U.S. “way down from where it was,” without elaborating.

Xi also refused to budge on Trump’s request that the Chinese leader release imprisoned Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and former media magnate Jimmy Lai. Trump had pledged to “bring up” the cases of Lai and an unnamed jailed pastor prior to his trip. Xi said he’d give “very serious consideration” to releasing the pastor, but said releasing Lai would be “ a tough one for him to do,” Trump said Friday.

There were low expectations going into the summit. Some of the more serious structural issues that vex U.S.-China ties — government subsidies to China’s industrial sector and Beijing’s increasingly aggressive military footprint in the Indo-Pacific — didn’t appear to make the meeting agenda.

“This is a summit again that was heavier on symbolism than it was on substance — focus on managing problems, not on solving the problems that exist between the U.S. and China,” said Rush Doshi, former National Security Council deputy senior director for China and Taiwan in the Biden administration.

The lack of substantive outcomes from the summit may reflect the two leaders’ ambitions for more in-depth discussions later this year. Trump and Xi may meet as many as four times this year as part of administration efforts to stabilize U.S.-China relations, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in January. Their next face-to-face encounter will be when Xi makes a state visit to the White House in September. The two leaders may also have sideline meetings at the APEC economic leaders meeting in Shenzhen, China in November and the G20 meeting in Miami in December.

“The way that both leaders talked about the future indicates that this is going to be part of a process that will play out this year,” said Kurt Campbell, former deputy secretary of State in the Biden administration.

Daniel Desrochers contributed to this report.