CHINESE President Xi Jinping heads into this week’s summit with U.S. President Donald Trump having “outmaneuvered the Trump administration so far,” according to China expert Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), as the two leaders seek to preserve a fragile commercial truce over tariffs and rare earths.
With record Chinese exports, advances in technology and continued U.S. dependence on China for critical minerals, Kennedy said, both world powers now appear to favor stability in the relationship.
AI, trade and rare earths are all on the agenda, and Kennedy expects commercial issues to dominate the talks, with the two leaders likely to seek an extension of their recent trade ceasefire. He said that could mean China continuing to export rare earths while Washington keeps tariffs from rising, with a possible extension lasting about a year.
The Trump administration has said China has fallen short on commitments to restore flows of critical minerals, while both sides have an interest in preventing a renewed escalation in trade tensions.
Artificial intelligence could also emerge as a significant area for discussion amid recent concerns about uncontrolled AI development at frontier labs.
The wars involving Russia and Ukraine and in the Middle East are also likely to come up, Kennedy said, with Washington seeking greater Chinese cooperation over Russia and Iran, but he said the Trump administration appeared unlikely to make Chinese assistance a red line that could send the broader relationship “off the rails,” and may instead be looking for at least symbolic gestures from Beijing.
Kennedy said a key test of the summit will be whether Trump and Xi extend the rare-earths and tariff truce and begin a substantive dialogue on artificial intelligence. Failure to maintain the current ceasefire, he said, could leave the relative calm between Washington and Beijing “super fragile and not going to last much longer.”
