May 15, 2026 • 1:11 pm ET
Atlantic Council
GET UP TO SPEED
It was a big show—with little to show for it. On Friday, US President Donald Trump concluded talks in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping, soaring away in Air Force One after two days of meetings and ceremonies. Trump said that he and Xi settled “a lot of different problems,” yet they did not appear to strike major agreements on closely watched issues, from trade to tech to the Iran war. Below, our experts, who were tracking the meeting with a close eye, shed light on the outcomes.
TODAY’S EXPERT REACTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY
Melanie Hart: Senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub and former senior advisor for China at the US State Department Josh Lipsky (@joshualipsky): Vice president and chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council and former International Monetary Fund advisor The big picture
Melanie tells us that Trump’s “biggest misstep” was “his overall approach to China,” because he “portrayed the United States as desperately needing Beijing’s favor.” “That is not a good look,” Melanie argues, adding that “it signals to Chinese officials that they should play hardball. That is exactly what they did.” In bringing along so many American business leaders, Melanie says, the US president made Washington seem “overly eager to sign deals that were not yet ready for prime time.” That, plus Trump’s announcements of signed deals (and Beijing’s silence on them) “gave off a whiff of desperation that Beijing jumped on,” Melanie notes. But Matt argues that the lack of any major breakthroughs “is a good thing,” since “the only imaginable breakthroughs were either impossible” (getting China to change its economic system to fix the trade imbalance) “or undesirable” (shifting the United States’ Taiwan policy).Sign up to receive rapid insight in your inbox from Atlantic Council experts on global events as they unfold.
Taiwan tightrope
Matt argues that it “was always unlikely” that Trump would sell out Taiwan for some big deal with China, because the president has “provided strong support to Taipei” during both his terms.Trump “did not weaken US declaratory language regarding Taiwan’s special status” and held firm on the US policy of “strategic ambiguity,” Matt tells us, with the president saying to reporters on Friday that he is the only person who knows whether Washington will come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of an attack. On the first day of the meetings, China’s Foreign Ministry published a readout of a Trump-Xi exchange that quoted the Chinese leader warning his US counterpart to “exercise extra caution” on the Taiwan issue, or else the US and China “will have clashes and even conflicts.” Melanie explains that with such statements, “Beijing is trying to convince the Trump administration to delay (or cancel)” a fourteen-billion-dollar US arms sale package for Taiwan, which is awaiting the White House’s signature.Chips, no dip
While there was no public announcement, reports that the US has approved around ten Chinese tech companies to purchase NVIDIA’s advanced H200 chips “buoyed optimism in US markets,” Kenton points out, as NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang joined the trip to Beijing. But Kenton says that those chip sales may not actually come through, as Beijing pushes to rely on its own domestic technology, even if it’s “less capable” than US chips, to power advances in artificial intelligence. “Chinese policymakers appear prepared to absorb short-term pain in exchange for what they hope will be longer-term insulation from US chokepoints on chip technology,” she tells us.Meanwhile, Beijing reportedly did not raise US export controls on chips during the meeting. “Beijing’s tolerance for existing US restrictions,” Kenton adds, “rests partly on the expectation that the US will avoid sudden, sweeping escalations that could severely disrupt China’s AI and semiconductor sectors.” Trading places
Trump said the word “tariff” didn’t arise in the conversations, but the topic was looming in the background, Josh tells us, as US investigations into Chinese unfair trade practices are expected to result in new tariffs this summer. “That’s likely why China did not feel any urgency to make major new announcements on the follow-through of purchase agreements, whether it’s soybeans, beef, or energy.”Trump did say that China agreed to purchase two hundred Boeing airplanes. If confirmed by China, “that’s significant and the first order of its kind from an official arm of the Chinese government in nearly a decade,” Josh says. “But it fell short of expectations—the market was looking at three hundred to five hundred planes.”With no talk about China’s record trade surplus with the rest of the world—whichis creating a “China shock 2.0” of cheap electric vehicles, solar panels, and more—Josh says the two leaders “seemed satisfied to nibble around the edges of the economic relationship.”Josh points out that Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet again in September in Washington, November in Shenzen, and December at the G20 Summit in Miami: “That timeline aligns with the end of the trade truce brokered in South Korea in October 2025—and it may mean the tougher conversations are going to happen later in the year.”
Further reading
Inflection Points Today
By
Washington and Beijing do not trust each other. But expect Trump and Xi to remain on message this week, saying friendly things about each other.
