The president’s engagement with Xi is delivering results.
This week, China’s President Xi Jinping returns to Washington, DC, a city he has not visited since 2015. This will be Xi’s first time meeting with President Donald Trump in the White House itself, and Trump has rolled out the red carpet for his Chinese counterpart.
Ahead of the visit, much digital ink has been spilled trying to predict what the two leaders will discuss. Deservedly taking the spotlight are AI and its “shared risks,” Chinese EVs’ access to the U.S. market, and the fate of the trade truce negotiated at Busan last year.
But rather than forecasting exactly what might happen, a more worthwhile exercise is to consider how the U.S.–China relationship became a “quiet foreign policy success.”
Trump has drawn several key lessons from his first term, and his pursuit of a more deliberate strategy for managing the U.S.–China relationship has created new opportunities to advance American interests.
The first lesson Trump seems to have learned is that the leader-to-leader relationship is fundamental to bilateral relations more generally. Often overlooked is that Trump is a New York City entertainer and socialite at heart. He knows the value of woo and a certain kind of hospitality. It’s in vogue among the U.S. foreign policy commentariat to dismiss or minimize Trump’s flash, but it seems to work in his favor when it comes to Xi.
In April 2017, Trump hosted Xi at Mar-a-Lago. This was their very first meeting, and during that visit, Trump’s young grandchildren, Arabella and Joseph Kushner, performed for Xi in Mandarin Chinese, singing a traditional Chinese song and reciting classical Chinese poetry. The president’s grandchildren speaking Mandarin is an underrated soft-power symbol.
Jared Kushner would later write in his memoir that Xi seemed a bit disappointed when Arabella did not travel to Beijing in November 2017. The Chinese leader listened to Arabella perform via a tablet and gave her an “A+.”
The Covid-19 pandemic, of course, soured Trump and Xi’s relationship. Trump blamed China for a decline in his popularity leading up to the 2020 election, and Xi became frustrated by Trump calling the pandemic the “China Virus.”
But time heals all wounds. In 2024, with the pandemic fading from memory and Trump returning to the presidency, Xi and Trump resumed their communication via phone calls and written letters.
This past May, Trump visited China. Xi took Trump on a rare stroll through the Zhongnanhai residence. Few foreigners are granted this kind of privilege. It’s a reasonable guess that Trump’s motivation for rushing a White House helipad renovation is his desire to match or exceed the hospitality he received. China also publicized Xi’s July Fourth well-wishes to Trump, the kind of treatment reserved for close partners like Russia.
The two leaders seem keen to keep the conversation going, and have carefully avoided trading barbs. Even while navigating tense issues like the trade war and election-meddling allegations, the president refrains from attacking Xi directly. Likewise, Chinese spokespeople and media outlets are also careful in their criticism, and generally avoid specifically going after Trump.
Trump knows that a working relationship with Xi can provide a strong foundation for dealmaking and for stability. A misstep around Taiwan, however, could derail everything.
This is the second lesson: Ambiguity on Taiwan is essential. Trump has learned to walk the tightrope here, reverting to actual “strategic ambiguity” after the erraticism of his predecessor. Tautologically, nothing could wreck the U.S.–China relationship faster than getting into a military conflict over the island.
The president has avoided repeating the mistakes he made during his first term (as in December 2016, when he flaunted a 10-minute phone call with Taiwan’s then-president, Tsai Ing-wen). This time around, he has observed a tight discipline in his public commentary about Taiwan. Between September 2024 and February 2026, Trump did not mention Taiwan once in his prodigious social media posts (since then, “Taiwan” has appeared just four times: three times critically and once describing Taiwan as a topic of conversation with Xi).
When he does speak about Taiwan, he evades and wisely refrains from giving specifics. In November 2025, Trump gave a 60 Minutes interview with Norah O’Donnell. She asked, “Would you order U.S. forces to defend Taiwan?” He replied, “You’ll find out if it happens.”
This is not (just) Trump being coy—rather, it’s a return to long-standing U.S. policy.
The ambiguity also shows up in other policy choices. His administration approved over $11 billion in weapons sales to Taiwan in 2025, but it has largely eschewed subsidizing these purchases via financing or direct grants, instead preferring to keep things on a more transactional basis. Trump has also frozen a proposed $14 billion sale to Taiwan, which he has framed as a “good negotiating chip” in dealing with China.
We don’t know what he’ll do next, and that’s exactly the point. It’s a core feature of decades of successful U.S. policy, and Trump and his team understand it well.
The third lesson Trump has learned is to limit the number of key decisionmakers involved in China strategy. His first administration had too many people around the table, which brought bloat and allowed contradictions to creep in. This go-around, a smaller, more aligned group of advisors is implementing, not undermining, Trump’s China agenda and bringing a balanced approach.
On economics, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer have brought their considerable experience to bear without endangering or modulating the president’s core goals. And venturing into the political-military realm, State and Defense Department officials appear to be meeting much more frequently with their Chinese counterparts than was the case during the Biden years.
Pacific Command leader Admiral Samuel Paparo recently met with People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Yang Zhibin, the Chinese military official who would oversee Chinese military operations in a Taiwan scenario. Rubio was allowed into China with Trump this past May, despite being sanctioned by China. He publicly argues that the U.S. and China have to stay in contact.
Outside the White House team, U.S. Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) has quietly played a supporting role in Trump’s diplomacy. He knows China well, having lived and worked in Hong Kong and mainland China in the 1990s.
The senator has made a handful of trips to China in the past 18 months, taking many closed-door meetings with Chinese leaders. When the Busan Summit preparations needed guidance, Daines advised Bessent that “soybeans and fentanyl precursors… could be takeaways from that meeting.” Those two items indeed became key takeaways.
Since Busan, China is on track to meet its U.S. soybean purchases, but even more promising are the strides being made on fentanyl and counternarcotics cooperation.
Three years ago, fatal fentanyl overdoses in the U.S. peaked around 76,000. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control estimated there were 38,000 fatalities. While other factors such as public health interventions and the end of the pandemic are likely driving this welcome decline, a recent article in Science suggests that U.S.-China cooperation on this issue is explaining part of the decline.
Addressing fentanyl is an important issue for Trump. It featured in his 2024 campaign and was explicitly mentioned when he levied tariffs against China. Progress on this issue also affects the daily lives of Americans, as lowering fatalities leads to less devastation for families and communities.
Trump began raising the issue of fentanyl in November 2018, when he broached the topic with Xi at the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Biden administration also deserves credit for restoring dormant U.S.-China counternarcotic cooperation channels in November 2023.
What’s new? At Trump’s request, China placed new restrictions on over a dozen chemical fentanyl precursors, and those restrictions extend not just to sales to the United States, but also to Mexico and Canada. According to one Ministry of Public Security (MPS) official, Chinese sellers now must prove that purchases were for legitimate purposes. Law enforcement cooperation between the FBI and the MPS has led to intelligence sharing, cross-border arrests, and drug seizures.
After Xi’s departure from Washington, Trump could reunite with Xi twice more in 2026.
Trump’s been invited to Shenzhen, China to attend the November 2026 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit. (Xi would no doubt want to show off the development of the southern Chinese technology and innovation hub.) Miami will be the host site of the G20 Summit in December, so Xi could travel to Florida as well.
Both visits would be opportunities to continue right-sizing the relationship, and for Trump to continue implementing the lessons learned earlier.
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Some foreign policy analysts are skeptical of Trump’s approach. They cite his “instability,” the structural illusion of “personalist diplomacy,” and the balance of power ledger is beginning to favor Beijing.
But Trump’s chances should not be written off. The idea of change often seems ridiculous and far-fetched until the day it arrives. And Trump is in control over China policy in a way that wasn’t necessarily true in the first term. He’s actually getting to do things “his way” this time around.
The president is blazing a new path for U.S.–China relations: neither permanent hostility nor fawning submission, but a stable, productive relationship. Regular communication with China, a deliberate attempt to keep a lid on Taiwan tensions, and a focus on securing benefits for everyday Americans are the pillars of this approach. And so far, it seems to be working.