US President Donald Trump sought to build expectations before arriving for a high-stakes summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
He said he would urge Xi to “open up” China’s economy, and announced that a delegation of top business leaders would accompany him, including Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.
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As President Trump and President Xi prepare to conclude two days of talks on Friday, expectations for the outcome of the summit are generally modest at best among observers.
President Trump and President Xi Jinping are expected to extend the one-year hiatus in their trade war agreed to in October with South Korea, but the hope is that relations between the world’s two largest economies, locked in disputes on everything from trade to artificial intelligence to the status of Taiwan, will be stabilized rather than revitalized.
“It’s important to take a calm look at the relationship here,” Claire E. Reed, a senior adviser at Arnold & Porter who previously worked on China issues at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, told Al Jazeera.
“China doesn’t trust the United States, and China wants to outdo the United States in long-term global competition,” Reid said.
“This limits what can be agreed upon.”
Although President Trump and President Xi have yet to announce the final contours of a trade deal, the U.S. side has sounded the alarm about various business deals in the works.
In a pre-recorded interview on Fox News that aired Thursday, Trump said China intended to invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” in companies run by CEOs in his delegation, without providing further details.
President Trump also said the Chinese government has agreed to buy U.S. oil and 200 Boeing aircraft.
Trump administration officials said they are also discussing establishing an “investment committee” to manage investments between the two countries.
Taiyi Sun, associate professor of political science at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, told Al Jazeera: “A realistic ‘opening up’ of the Chinese market will first focus on areas where economic complementarities are most obvious.”
“Agricultural products such as soybeans and beef, and high-value manufactured products such as Boeing aircraft, are natural areas for expansion as they match existing Chinese demand with U.S. export strengths.”
Mr. Sun said there could also be a “step-by-step” move-in of U.S. companies in areas such as financial services.
“However, these areas are more politically and institutionally sensitive within China, so progress is likely to be gradual rather than immediate.”
Gabriel Wildow, senior vice president at global business advisory firm Teneo, said both countries will seek to address supply chain vulnerabilities exposed by the trade war.
“Given the need to rebuild military supplies depleted by the Iran war, the Iran war likely increased the U.S. vulnerability to rare earth export controls,” Wildau told Al Jazeera.
“Washington may therefore be willing to offer tariff relief, or at least a guarantee that no new tariffs will be imposed, in exchange for China’s commitment to maintain rare earth exports.”
President Trump and President Xi agreed to remove some trade barriers at their summit in South Korea, but after a decade of economic tit-for-tat between the two countries, business and trade between the United States and China remains severely constrained.
The average U.S. tariff on Chinese goods after the U.S.-South Korea summit was 47.5%, up from 3.1% before President Trump’s first term, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
China’s average tariff on U.S. goods was 31.9%, up from 8.4% in 2018, the think tank said.
Two-way merchandise trade in 2025 was approximately $415 billion, down significantly from its peak of $690 billion in 2022.
Carsten Holz, an expert on China economics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said China has less incentive than before to make concessions to the United States given the rise of its domestic industry.
“In many industrial sectors, Chinese (People’s Republic of China) companies hold leading or dominant positions,” Holtz told Al Jazeera.
“As a result, China’s economy has little to gain from further opening to the United States, which is likely to only provide a largely symbolic gesture.”
Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Heinrich Foundation in Singapore, echoed similar sentiments about the limits of US influence.
“Essentially, President Trump expects China to buy more from the United States and allow American companies to operate more freely in China,” Elms told Al Jazeera.
“What is he offering?” Elms said. “That’s hardly the case, mainly because President Trump views the bilateral relationship as fair for the United States and not fair for China.”
Reed, a former USTR official, said Xi would not agree to any measures that “undermine China’s interests in any way.”
“In return, China could give the United States a free ‘gift,'” Reid said, suggesting such measures could include removing trade barriers on American beef.
“We may purchase any American products that we need,” Reed said.
“If we allow the purchase of U.S. high-tech products, it will only be because we need them now,” he added, “but it will not interfere with China’s strategic plan to eliminate dependence on U.S. technology in the long term.”
