When President Donald Trump welcomed Chinese leader Xi Jinping to the White House Sept. 24, the stagecraft was unmistakable: a state dinner, smiles for the cameras and carefully scripted statements of goodwill.
Craig Singleton
The ceremony projected stability. But beneath the pageantry, the competition between the two countries remains as fierce as ever.
The latest summit confirmed what the U.S.-China relationship has become: a superpower stalemate. Neither country expects to remake the other, and neither expects the rivalry to end. Instead, Trump and Xi are trying to put a floor under the relationship, making limited deals where they can while keeping harder disputes from becoming crises.
The tariff truce shows how that can work. After a bruising trade war that sent tariffs soaring, Trump and Xi struck a one-year truce in Busan, South Korea, in October.
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In Washington, they extended the truce by just two months, into January, buying time to avoid another round of increases that could hurt businesses and consumers in both countries. But the small extension leaves bigger disputes over trade, technology and U.S. arms sales to Taiwan unresolved.
Beyond the truce, the two sides agreed to keep working to lower tariffs on agricultural and energy products, and to keep talking about artificial intelligence, even as both countries race to dominate the technology.
Xi also announced that two pandas will soon head to Zoo Atlanta, a welcome symbol of warmer ties but hardly a solution to what divides the two nations.
In other words, Washington and Beijing announced more machinery to manage the competition than to resolve it.
Just as important is what Trump did not get. China is about halfway to its pledge to buy 25 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans this year. Beijing previously pledged at least $17 billion a year in additional American farm purchases beyond soybeans. But the Sept. 24 summit produced no new breakthrough on that commitment. China's agreement in May to buy roughly 200 Boeing aircraft also is unmet.
Nor did Trump secure a breakthrough on Beijing's promise to restore reliable rare-earth and magnet supplies to U.S. industry. China dominates the processing of these critical inputs, used in cars, electronics, aerospace and advanced manufacturing. By continuing to restrict their flow to U.S. companies, Beijing can squeeze American factories and preserve a powerful tool for leverage in disputes.
Taiwan is the clearest potential flash point. Since May, Trump has held off on approving a $14 billion arms package for the island nation. During the summit, Xi effectively warned Trump that moving ahead with it could jeopardize their stable relationship.
Yet Washington has provided defensive weapons to Taiwan for decades, under the Taiwan Relations Act, to deter Chinese coercion. If Trump continues delaying those sales in response to Beijing's pressure, China could conclude that coercion works.
A similar caution applies at home. Trump has suggested he would welcome Chinese automakers building factories in the U.S. But that could threaten U.S. automakers while introducing espionage risks from connected cars built by Chinese companies and packed with cameras and sensors.
The U.S. government already restricts certain Chinese technologies for those reasons, and U.S. intelligence calls China America's most active and persistent cyber threat.
The summit made clear that Washington will keep racing to reduce its reliance on China and rebuild critical supply chains at home. Beijing will do the opposite, working to preserve the dependencies that give it leverage over American decision-making.
The summit's real verdict begins now that Xi has left. China's promises are measurable. Soybean purchases will show up in trade data. Rare-earth shipments can be traced. The Board of Trade will either remain a talking point or start producing deals.
If Beijing delivers, Trump will know China is playing ball. If deadlines slip and commitments remain unmet, he will know China is playing him.
In diplomacy, style and summitry can set the tone, but substance will determine whether this superpower stalemate endures or breaks down.
Singleton is a former U.S. diplomat, senior director of the China Program and a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank. He wrote this for USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.
