Overview
With less than a week before President Xi Jinping is scheduled to arrive in Washington for talks with President Donald Trump, expectations for a major breakthrough remain low. The September 24 summit comes as the November 10 expiration approaches for the one-year trade truce that eased tariffs and paused several trade and export-control measures. Meanwhile, tensions over AI and the ongoing war in Iran add new points of friction to an already fragile relationship. The meeting will test whether Washington and Beijing can extend the relative stability of the past year, or whether mounting economic and geopolitical tensions will begin to unravel it.
Zayna Dembinski, Asia Pacific analyst: Beijing is unlikely to leave next week’s summit with firm assurances of more predictable US policy
Next week’s summit offers Beijing an opportunity to secure a more predictable framework for managing US-China competition while preserving its core interests, though Washington’s approach in the summit’s run-up leaves uncertainty over how much predictability Beijing can expect. For China, predictability means reinforcing its interpretation of the “strategic stability” framework agreed to in May: keeping competition within “proper limits,” managing differences, respecting each side’s development path and core interests, and adhering to the three US-China joint communiqués foundational to US-China relations. Its aim is to create an ecosystem in which US policy shifts are less likely to disrupt China’s economic and diplomatic agenda.
Washington also appears keen to keep the summit on track, but its China policy has not been consistent. The Trump administration has paired calls for bilateral stability with continued pressure, including over China’s implementation of its May commitments, revived allegations of Chinese election interference, and additions to the Pentagon’s 1260H list, to name a few. The House’s passage of the Graham sanctions bill on Wednesday could create another lever for President Trump against China through tariffs. Meanwhile, Beijing has again warned that new US arms sales to Taiwan could jeopardize the summit, particularly alarming given Trump’s earlier remarks that the sale is a “very good negotiating chip” to seek concessions from China. Still, these pressures are markedly less intense than in the run-up to last year’s Busan summit and the May meeting in Beijing, suggesting Washington is ultimately seeking to avoid a rupture.
For Beijing, the summit also has a wider audience beyond Washington. Xi will arrive in Washington after a September diplomatic push across Central Asia and the Global South, where China emphasized multilateralism and opposition to unilateral coercion. Whatever the summit delivers substantively, Beijing is likely to cast the summit as evidence China can engage the US from a position of consistency and strength, even as US policy remains volatile.
Carter Spahn, geoeconomics analyst: The summit could expand trade while preserving the strategic barriers reshaping US–China commerce
Ahead of the summit, negotiators are discussing tariff reductions covering $30 billion of goods from each country, with product coverage still under negotiation, via the Board of Trade. The bilateral Board of Trade focuses on “non-sensitive” goods and creates room for commercial expansion alongside national-security restrictions, though details remain sparse and are likely to become clearer after US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng’s meeting this weekend. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has described the Board as managed trade, without expecting fundamental changes to China’s economic system.
Rare earths and semiconductors are the two key sectors, each demonstrating the conflict between vast commercial opportunity and significant national security implications. Beijing has offered cooperation on mineral shortages while defending its export controls. Easier access to cheaper Chinese rare earths could reduce manufacturers’ costs but weaken incentives to finance alternative suppliers, potentially prolonging dependence on China. On semiconductors, Nvidia’s H200 sales required approvals from both Washington and Beijing. Broader Chinese approvals could expand AI computing capacity while increasing competition for domestic chipmakers, complicating Beijing’s pursuit of technological self-sufficiency.
Greer also expects announcements on agricultural trade and non-tariff barriers intended to expand US farm exports to China. Chinese buyers reportedly purchased around 1 million metric tons of US soybeans in early September, with state-owned firms stepping up orders ahead of the summit. Yet US soybeans face a 13% tariff, including an additional 10% duty, compared with 3% for Brazilian supplies. That discrepancy naturally pushes Chinese demand to Brazil.
The current trade-and-technology truce expires in November. Beijing reportedly wants an extension through the remainder of Trump’s term, while Washington favors six months. If the US gets its way, it allows the Trump administration to participate in another round of deal-making, a passion of President Trump’s. For the Chinese, maintaining the status quo may be more important than securing a major breakthrough as it seeks to manage a broader strategic competition that, in my opinion, it considers itself to already be winning.
Thomas Goldstein, tech analyst: Thorny disagreements over tech issues continue to steer bilateral competition
Ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting, US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent will meet with China Vice Premier He Lifeng this weekend to discuss economic issues. Notably, Bessent stated that the US is “open to” discussions on avoiding “bifurcation” and “shared risks” of their AI stacks. This would be a notable addition to the policy discussion from the Trump-Xi meeting in May 2026, which largely overlooked tech issues.
The momentum to improve AI safety and cybersecurity trust has increased amid two trends. First, Chinese open-weight models like Zhipu’s GLM-5.3 have matched the cybersecurity capabilities of frontier American models like Mythos 5. Second, the US is increasingly concerned about misalignment amid calls to “slow down” the AI race; American frontier AI labs have disclosed multiple incidents where AI models escape their testing environments and hack the testers or other companies without instruction to do so. Any AI development slowdown could only feasibly occur under a collective action regime backed by the US and China. Both countries, seeking to preserve their fragile trade truce, may opt to focus on areas of constructive engagement and compartmentalize tensions. But trust is needed for such a regime to succeed.
Contrarily, US-China tech tensions have simmered over the past year and risk reaching a boil. From China’s perspective, the US continues to bifurcate the technology stack. In the past year, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has placed bans on Chinese-produced routers, optical transceivers, drones, and humanoid and dog robots, as well as telecommunication equipment operated by companies in the 2024 FCC Covered List (essentially a retroactive ban). China has viewed these actions as sanctions and added the same technologies to its export licensing list. Meanwhile, China’s foreign investment screening process has prevented American firms from acquiring Chinese tech and AI startups, likely on national security grounds.
Anni Coonan, Middle East analyst: The Iran war looms over the summit, with Washington hesitant to target robust China-Iran economic ties
The Trump-Xi meeting comes a month to the day after the launch of the US’ “Operation Economic Outcast.” The broad sanctions campaign was a renewed effort to squeeze Iran’s economy in a bid to force Tehran back to the negotiating table by targeting Iran’s major trading partners with secondary sanctions. China, which provides major economic support to Iran in the form of non-dollar-denominated oil sales (currently at a trickle due to the US naval blockade), was and is an obvious target for American sanctions. The China-Iran economic relationship is one of the only remaining areas where significant economic escalation would be possible for the US because current “maximum pressure” sanctions are so extensive that there are few Iranian industries not already subject to restrictions. While Chinese entities are already subject to US sanctions on Iran’s oil and weapons trade, US sanctions on the Chinese banks could cut China off from the dollar-denominated financial system and strangle the Iranian economy.
But even before Economic Outcast’s launch, the US has been hesitant to escalate sanctions on China over fears of damage to the fragile bilateral relationship. That tension will be on stark display during the summit. Trump is likely to seek first and foremost to preserve the economic relationship and will not push for new US sanctions. He may ask that Beijing increase its diplomatic pressure on Iran to negotiate or de-escalate. That option may be more attractive to China as the naval blockade extends and Beijing’s artificially depressed oil demand starts to bounce back. However, China and Tehran presented a largely united front during this week’s visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi to Beijing.
A sanctions-related rift is not the only risk to the bilateral relationship arising from the Iran war. China likely sees the conflict as an object lesson in the limits of American economic influence and military interventionism. That takeaway should alarm Washington.
