The meeting the world was waiting for, finally took place in the White House, where US President Donald Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday.
US President Donald Trump will follow up his summit with Xi Jinping by taking the Chinese leader on Friday to the US National Archives, where they are expected to stress views about the history and direction of ties between their countries.
Reuters writes Thursday’s lavish state summit at the White House appeared heavy on symbolism but light on substance, with no sign of major breakthroughs between the world’s biggest economies.
Still, Trump highlighted progress under a bilateral trade mechanism, citing what he described as increased market access for US farmers and ranchers, while both leaders identified artificial intelligence as an area for cooperation.
Trump said in remarks welcoming Xi they would see some of the greatest treasures of US history at the National Archives, including the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
They would also see “artifacts testifying to the long and cherished relationship” between China and the United States and their “cultural exchanges,” he said. “Just as our ancestors reached across the ocean centuries ago to trade, to learn, and to build a better world, our two countries do really the same thing, and we’re very proud of it and the relationship,” Trump said.
China has not commented on the visit to the archives, but analysts say Xi may be keen to see records relating to the US switch of recognition to communist China from Taiwan in 1979.
Acording to press agencies, the talks on Thursday focused on trade, artificial intelligence and the growing strategic rivalry between the countries .
The main result was that the trade truce was extended.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two sides had extended a trade truce that was due to expire in November during talks, but only by two months.
He said the extension would give the two sides “more time to see what we can do on the economic front.”
The extension pushes the central questions of tariffs, Chinese purchases, rare-earth supplies and technology restrictions into the next round of negotiations.
Bessent said on Wednesday that Beijing was meeting its requirement in the earlier agreement to buy 25 million tons of soybeans but was lagging on its pledge to buy $17 billion in other agricultural goods. US officials have said rare-earth deliveries were also falling short, another sign that significant gaps remain.
For companies, the result is a familiar form of instability: tariff rates remain lower for now, but decisions must still be made against a shifting policy backdrop.
Trump and Xi could have more opportunities to hammer out a more permanent deal ahead of the new January 10 deadline, with two multilateral summits scheduled in Shenzhen and Miami before the end of this year.
Nothing new on Taiwan
Xi pressed Trump on the Taiwan issue, saying, according to China’s official news agency Xinhua, that China hoped the United States would “handle the Taiwan question with prudence to lay a solid foundation for bilateral strategic cooperation and the development of China-US ties.”
The agency’s English-language service also wrote that Xi hoped the US would oppose Taiwan independence. Reuters comments that wording would be a tougher version of Washington’s long-standing formulation that it does not “support” independence. There are no signs that the Trump administration plans to change its wording.
There was no immediate White House readout of the exchange, but US officials have long avoided explicitly stating opposition to Taiwanese independence. Any shift in language would raise questions about Washington’s resolve to defend the island and provoke opposition in Congress.
Taiwan responded. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s comments on Taiwan to US President Donald Trump represent the consistent Chinese approach of “distorting facts” and only the island’s people can decide their future, Taipei’s foreign ministry said on Friday.
“The Chinese communist regime has no right to represent the Taiwanese people,” it said in a statement.
Washington is Taiwan’s most important international backer and is bound by US law to provide it with the means to defend itself.
Trump raised questions about that commitment after his summit with Xi in May when he described a pending arms package for Taiwan worth up to $14 billion as a “negotiating chip.”
Antiquity back again
Xi invoked again the “Thucydides Trap”, an academic theory that competition between a rising power and an established one tends toward war.
While the Chinese leader said the risk “can be overcome,” his reference underscored the extent to which concerns about a potential US-China military conflict continue to shadow relations between the world’s two largest powers.
Xi argued that both nations stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation, and he called for regular military dialogue and stronger crisis-prevention mechanisms.
Trump, for his part, drew on the two nations’ shared history to emphasize the potential for cooperation. They could accomplish much by pursuing common interests, he said, invoking their wartime alliance against Japan.
Showing off the White House
After Xi treated Trump in Beijing to a tour around a Ming dynasty temple and a walled-off garden retreat rarely opened to foreigners, the US president returned the favor with a different kind of spectacle: Troops wearing wigs and tri-corner hats marched in formation and played music in a Rose Garden redesigned to look like a Trump golf club, writes Reuters.
Fighter jets and bombers roared overhead during ceremonies staged on Wednesday and Thursday, one so loud it caused Trump to flinch.
Trump has talked for months about needing more authority, often over the objection of courts and the US Congress, to beautify and remodel the nation’s capital ahead of Xi’s visit, although many of the projects, like the new White House ballroom and the Reflecting Pool, are not yet finished or have run into problems.
Speaking to reporters, Trump brushed away questions about their policy discussions and only said “Great meeting”.
What about the press?
