Optical illusions: Gains from Trump-Xi summit were underwhelming

Much was expected of the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his United States (US) counterpart, Donald Trump. But beyond the elaborate pageantry, there were few tangible outcomes from the two-day summit between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies. The absence of a joint statement and differences between the US and Chinese readouts underlined the divergence between the two countries on the major sources of friction between them: The conflict in West Asia, for which Mr Trump had postponed his Beijing visit; trade; the security of Taiwan; nuclear proliferation; and artificial intelligence. The positives lay principally in the optics. Mr Trump was notably less hawkish than before, and the large business delegation that accompanied him signalled that he might be willing to do business with China. This aligns with what Mr Xi called “constructive strategic stability”. But these slight shifts in emphasis are heavily conditional.

 

Nothing underlined this better than the differing positions on Taiwan. The Chinese readout of the meeting quoted Mr Xi as warning Mr Trump to exercise extra caution over its ties with Taiwan, or else the entire Sino-US relations would be in jeopardy. The background to this is an $11 billion armaments package the White House approved for Taiwan in December and a further $14 billion awaiting the presidential signature. The US readout, however, made no mention of Taiwan. Equally, the US President has not made any statement suggesting he would weaken US support for Taiwan, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated to reporters that US policy on Taiwan had not changed.

 

If Beijing did not achieve its objectives on Taiwan, US progress on other issues was underwhelming. US hopes for Chinese cooperation in influencing its major energy partner Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz yielded only a holding statement from the Chinese calling for a “comprehensive and lasting ceasefire” — the issue eluding Mr Trump at the moment. China sees the Iran war as essentially a US problem. As for the “fantastic trade deals, great for both countries”, of which Mr Trump spoke, evidence on this is thin. Among the deals the US President listed were Chinese commitments to buy soybean and 200 Boeing aircraft with a potential commitment to purchase up to 750 jets. Though Boeing has confirmed this agreement, China has neither acknowledged this nor mentioned any of the others. China’s agreement to restore trade in beef with the US as a goodwill gesture a day ahead of Mr Trump’s visit was partially clawed back later that day. There was no breakthrough deal of the US selling advance Nvidia chips, despite the chief executive officer’s last-minute inclusion in the trip. Perhaps the most consequential development of the summit was the establishment of a Board of Trade and Board of Investment to mediate disputes and negotiate expanding two-way trade under a reciprocal tariff-reduction framework.

 

Though Mr Xi has accepted Mr Trump’s invitation to visit the US in September this year, it is noteworthy that Beijing will be hosting Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 19-20, to strengthen the four-year-old “no limits” partnership. The back-to-back timing is dictated by Mr Trump’s postponement of the China visit. But the fact that the Beijing-Moscow axis remains as sturdy as ever is a compelling sign of the US’ waning influence over large swathes of global geopolitics. The Trump-Xi summit has comprehensively underlined this fact.