Trump-Xi summit: Cautious progress on commerce, ties and a few ‘win-wins’

President Donald Trump departed China on May 15, 2026, after a two-day summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping that was scrutinized from every angle for clues on where the relationship is heading.

Trump hailed the trip as “incredible,” while Xi remarked that it marked a “new bilateral relationship.” Other observers were a little less enthusiastic, noting that no major breakthroughs were evident at the highly anticipated meeting of the world’s two most powerful political leaders.

The Conversation turned to Yan Bennett, an expert in U.S.-China relations and author of “American Policy Discourses on China,” to provide her three big takeaways from the summit.

Taiwan: Tough(ish) talk but status quo in place

No one really expected there to be movement on Taiwan — which mainland China lays claims over — although it is clear that Beijing would like the United States to make a firmer stance against the island moving toward a declaration of independence, or for the U.S. to expressly demand reunification.

So what we got was Beijing reiterating that Taiwan remained a priority and a core interest. Xi did this on the first day of the summit, noting that the Taiwan “question” remained “the most important issue in China-U.S. relations,” and that any mishandling of it could lead to “clashes and even conflicts.”

But this was aimed at two things. First, Xi has a domestic audience he needs to address, and Taiwan has long been important to Chinese rhetoric. The Chinese Communist Party has around 100 million members, many of whom would have expected Xi to talk tough on Taiwan — and it was those people he was largely talking to.

But he was also signaling to the U.S. that it shouldn’t support Taiwanese independence. And that won’t ruffle any feathers in Washington. Indeed, the 2025 National Security Strategy stressed that the U.S. opposed unilateral action on Taiwan from “either party” — a signal to Beijing that it opposed Taiwan declaring independence.

Trump did mention arms deals to Taiwan. But the U.S.’s declaratory policy since the Reagan administration is that it doesn’t allow Beijing to enter discussions about what weapons Washington sells to Taiwan. And that hasn’t changed at all, nor has the U.S.’s treaty commitment to Taiwan since 1979 that requires the U.S. to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.

Rhetoric aside, everyone is happy with the status quo on Taiwan — it is in no one’s interest for it to change.

But talk of Taiwan has been muddied a little by Xi’s determination to modernize the People’s Liberation Army. The Chinese president has laid out a series of benchmarks including that the PLA should be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027. This has been misinterpreted in the U.S. under the so-called “Davidson window” — a concept that has it that China is intent on invading by that time.

In reality, China is nowhere near able to do so. It doesn’t have a “blue water navy” able to operate without port assistance, and the island is incredibly difficult to invade — it only has two places where you can land, and only at certain times of the year. It is also very mountainous. Taiwan is also slowly building its defenses — and learning a lot from Ukraine’s war with Russia — with the intention of becoming “indigestable” to China.

Xi’s modernization timeline also states that the PLA should be a “world class military” — taken to be a peer to the U.S. — by 2049. But the fact that it spends more on internal security than it does on defense indicates where the CCP’s true interests lay — in domestic security rather than external capabilities.

Trade: Tamped down expectations

The big picture is that the U.S. and China have been trying to restabilize what was until fairly recently a very good relationship in terms of economic ties.

Both sides have clear priorities to that extent. China wants to regain the American market it had in the 1990s and early 2000s — and certainly reverse the trend since 2018’s trade war.

Trump since his first administration has made it clear that he sees Chinese control over supply chains and the trade imbalance as a national security issue. Washington also wants to address unfair trade practices, such as the requirement that American companies hand over blueprints, trade secrets, customer lists, marketing plans and more to operate.

So what was achieved in the summit? On the surface, very little. There was some movement on sales of U.S. beef to China. And Trump announced that Beijing would buy 200 aircraft from Boeing — lower than the 500 that had been earlier touted in media reports. And several Chinese companies agreed to buy Nvidia microchips — a continuation of a process that began in late 2025.

That doesn’t seem much, and it was telling that Trump himself wasn’t being very “Trumpian” on what could be achieved during the summit. He wasn’t promising the moon.

But importantly, Xi and Trump agreed to establish a Board of Trade and Board of Investment — intended to create a pathway forward to more trade in the months to come.

A lot of focus will be on technology. China is about 18 months behind the U.S. in microchip development. Some have questioned whether U.S. companies should be selling chips to China, amid fears that China could steal the intellectual property and be able to use higher-technology chips for defense reasons. The U.S. position is it can’t allow Huawei — China’s telecom giant — to take over the whole Chinese market, so it will only allow the sale of what it considers appropriate-level Nvidia chips.

Military matters: Washington wants to talk

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the U.S. always kept the military lines of communications open to avert a catastrophic incident. This hasn’t been the case with Beijing and Washington. We saw that in 2001 when a U.S. aircraft collided with a Chinese jet; and again over the “Chinese spy balloon incident” in 2023.

Washington is seeking to open up a line of communication on military matters, and that is probably why U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was there in Beijing. Indeed, it is highly unusual for a defense secretary to be at such a summit.

Not that Trump believes he needs China’s help on military matters. He made that clear when asked about possible Beijing assistance prior to the summit.

In fact, little news came out of the summit on Iran. China has criticized the U.S. over the war, but has also quietly been telling Tehran to stop bombing Gulf countries.

Despite some commentary suggesting that Beijing benefits from the U.S. being bogged down in the Middle East, what Xi will want is a resolution before the economic fallout bites in China.

China’s stockpile of Iranian oil will only last a few more weeks and then oil price rises will hit China like a brick.