BEIJING — A conciliatory President Trump on Friday hailed success in his state visit to China, claiming a tonal reset with Xi Jinping despite departing Beijing with few concrete achievements.
The visual spectacle around Trump’s visit was itself considered a breakthrough by the two sides, who expressed an eagerness entering the talks to move on from a yearslong stretch of deteriorating relations.
But the U.S. delegation boarded Air Force One on Friday afternoon with little else to show from a summit the president had trumpeted for weeks as an historic event.
Trump’s deference to Xi was a striking display of a commanding president adapting to a new power dynamic, an acknowledgment of China’s rise and its emerging role in the world.
He deployed a charm offensive throughout his stay here, confident in the impact of his personal touch on world leaders, often seen patting Xi on the back and repeatedly calling him his friend.
Yet in private, tensions gripped negotiations that touched nearly every major issue on Trump’s agenda, from trade relations to the U.S. war in Iran.
“He’s all business,” Trump said from Beijing in an interview with Fox.
China agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets and spend billions on American agricultural products, U.S. officials said — modest deals that fall short of restoring Chinese investment levels to their pre–2025 highs, before Trump launched a trade war that aggressively targeted Beijing.
Nevertheless, Trump referred to the trade agreements as “fantastic,” and said Xi had also pledged to purchase U.S. energy going forward. Beijing did not confirm any such agreement.
Nor did the Chinese Foreign Ministry comment on any commitment to help the United States reopen the Strait of Hormuz, effectively shuttered by Iran since the Trump administration launched a war against the Islamic Republic earlier this year.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump participate in a friendship walk through Zhongnanhai Garden Fridah in Beijing.
(Evan Vucci / Pool / Reuters via Associated Press)
“We feel very similar on Iran, we want that to end,” Trump said Friday. “We don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the straits opened, and we want them to get it ended, because it’s a crazy thing — they’re a little bit crazy.”
At the beginning of the summit, Xi warned the Trump administration that the longstanding U.S. position of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan had set the two nations on a collision course, Chinese state media reported. But departing Beijing, Marco Rubio, the president’s national security advisor and secretary of state, said that Washington’s position on Taiwan remained “unchanged.”
Their second day of meetings was held at Zhongnanhai, an imperial garden and lake district that has served as the secretive seat of power for the Chinese Communist Party since the revolution of 1949.
The two men strolled quiet pathways dotted with Chinese roses and ornamental archways before taking tea and lunch in Xi’s private quarters. Trump was offered rose seeds to bring home for the White House Rose Garden, the Chinese said.
“This has been an incredible visit,” Trump told reporters at the compound. “A lot of good has come of it.”
It was not the first time that Xi has hosted a president at the historic compound. In 2014, the Chinese leader, still relatively new to the presidency, hosted President Obama overnight at Zhongnanhai, where the two met in private over dinner.
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping tour Zhongnanhai Garden.
(Evan Vucci / Pool / Getty Images)
It was another smoggy day for Trump in the Chinese capital, although cooler than Thursday, when Xi greeted Trump at the footsteps of Tiananmen Square with a lavish state welcome. There, Xi hosted Trump and his delegation at the Great Hall of the People for a day of meetings and a banquet dinner of Peking duck and pan-fried pork buns.
The two men will have future opportunities to meet, with Trump inviting Xi to Washington for a state visit at the White House in September.
“He’s a man I respect greatly,” Trump said.
