China has announced that US President Donald Trump will pay a state visit from May 13 to 15, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. When US President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping sit down in Beijing on Thursday (May 14th), an agenda ranging from Taiwan and trade to rare earths and artificial intelligence will have ramifications far beyond the two countries in the room. Here’s what’s at stake and for whom.
Trump-Xi summit in Beijing: Taiwan, trade, rare earths and issues that could reshape the global order
The Trump-Xi summit in Beijing this Thursday is shaping up to be one of the most significant diplomatic meetings in recent memory.
The two leaders and their delegations are expected to work on a wide-ranging agenda that includes trade, technology, rare earth export controls, Taiwan, the Iran war and artificial intelligence, with results that could reverberate across economies and governments from Tokyo to Brussels to Moscow.
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The summit agenda includes trade, technology (specifically artificial intelligence), rare earth export controls, Taiwan and the war in Iran. These topics have significant global impact.
Taiwan is seen as the biggest risk in bilateral relations. China claims Taiwan as its territory and has urged the US to limit security commitments while the US continues to sell arms to Taipei.
The summit could lead to shifts in US tariffs on Chinese goods, affecting manufacturing decisions in Southeast Asia. In addition, any agreement on energy purchases or trade could affect the market share of countries such as Japan and Europe.
China wants the predictability of US tariffs, which have fluctuated significantly. They also aim to ease US investment restrictions and seek to change US attitudes towards Taiwan.
The US-Iran war has delayed the summit and is a significant issue for both leaders. Trump wants China to help broker an end to the conflict as China tries to maintain stability and secure its oil supplies.
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“Virtually everyone has a stake in the outcome of this meeting,” said Chad Bown, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The meeting, originally scheduled for March, was postponed after Washington became embroiled in its war on Iran, which triggered what analysts described as the world’s worst energy shock in history. Trump has since signaled his intention for Xi to visit Washington later this year, marking the first trip by a Chinese leader to the US capital in a decade.
What’s on the table at the Beijing summit
The breadth of the agenda reflects just how much has accumulated between the two powers in recent months. Ahead of the summit, both sides stepped up pressure on many fronts.
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. Washington has accused Beijing of waging “industrial-scale” campaigns to steal US artificial intelligence technology. China, in turn, ordered companies not to comply with US sanctions on Iranian oil and hosted Iran’s foreign minister for a high-profile visit.
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China’s decision to suspend exports of a wide range of rare earths and related magnets and its ban on semiconductors from Nexperia China have already disrupted supply chains central to global carmakers, with political and economic ramifications across Europe, Japan and South Korea.
It is expected to be an eventful week before the leaders meet. Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are due to meet in South Korea on Wednesday to discuss economic and trade issues ahead of the Beijing summit.
Gabriel Wildau, chief executive of political risk consultancy Teneo, said the discussions may seek to ensure that recent escalations, including US sanctions against Chinese refiners buying Iranian oil, and Beijing’s countermeasures in response, do not disrupt a trade truce reached in South Korea last year.
Taiwan: Problem Both sides identify as the biggest risk
Taiwan is expected to be high on the agenda, with both the US and China making this explicit in recent weeks.
Beijing has reportedly urged the Trump administration to scale back its security commitments to the island and revise official US policy towards it. China claims the democratically administered island as its own territory, which Taiwan rejects and has long criticized US arms sales to Taipei.
In a phone call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on April 30, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi described Taiwan as the “biggest risk point” in bilateral relations and urged Washington to “keep its promise and make the right decisions and open a new space for cooperation between China and the US”.
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“Both countries understand that it is not in the interests of either of us to see anything destabilizing happen in this part of the world,” Wang Yi said.
Analysts warn that even mixed signals from Trump on Taiwan could have serious consequences. Bonnie Glaser, executive director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, told CNBC that any softening of the rhetoric, however vague, would be the “most destabilizing outcome” of the summit.
“A tacit or explicit deal in which Washington appears to cede a sphere of influence over Taiwan to Beijing” in exchange for concessions elsewhere could encourage China to take more assertive steps to erode Taiwan’s autonomy, Glaser said.
Southeast Asia is watching the Strait of Hormuz and changing tariffs
Governments across Southeast Asia will be watching the summit closely, especially for any dramatic shift in U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods compared to those applied to their own exports.
“If tariffs on Chinese exports are reduced, the business case for moving manufacturing from China to countries like Vietnam will also fall,” said Stephen Olson, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute visiting fellow.
The Strait of Hormuz is an equally pressing issue for the region. The states of Southeast Asia are heavily dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf and have borne a significant share of the energy shock caused by the conflict in the Middle East. Singaporean officials have repeatedly warned against economic myths and called for free passage through the strait.
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Should Trump and Xi reach an agreement on a joint effort to reopen the strait, it could provide short-term relief from the energy crisis, although analysts warn that such an outcome remains uncertain.
Japan and Europe could lose even if the summit is successful
For Brussels and Tokyo, a successful summit may paradoxically bring its own complications. A potential energy deal in which Beijing agrees to buy more U.S. oil and gas could push global commodity prices higher, said Matt Gertken, chief strategist at BCA Research. Any progress on trade, including Chinese commitments to direct investment in the U.S. economy, could crowd out Japanese and European market share, he added.
Russia is watching Beijing closely
The Trump-Xi Jinping meeting in Beijing will also be closely watched in Moscow, where Chinese support is becoming an increasingly important factor in Russia’s strategic calculations. The last face-to-face meeting between Trump and Xi, held in October, prompted Russian officials to rush to reaffirm Moscow’s alliance with Beijing.
“Russia would be nervous about an overall improvement in US-China relations,” CNBC quoted Dennis Wilder, a former US intelligence official and professor at Georgetown University, as saying.
Read also | China issued an injunction against US sanctions against domestic oil refineries
Wilder said it was possible that one outcome of the summit could be a reduction in China’s support for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit Beijing next week, just days after Trump’s departure.
Key things
- The Trump-Xi summit will address major global issues, including trade and Taiwan.
- Taiwan remains a critical flashpoint that could destabilize US-China relations.
- The results of the summit could have a ripple effect on economies and geopolitical alliances around the world.
