Donald Trump arrives in China this week needing favors far more desperately than he can offer them. The president is counting on Xi Jinping to restrain Iranian arms supplies and help navigate a Middle East crisis he created, but the price of Beijing's cooperation could reshape America's Asia strategy in ways that alarm longtime allies.
Trump's negotiating position has collapsed. After a string of policy failures on Ukraine, Gaza, NATO, Greenland, and now Iran and Lebanon, the president seeks a diplomatic win to showcase at home. His Iran war is tanking globally: energy and food prices have spiked, European allies have refused support, and US voters blame him directly. He is not winning militarily, either. The unspoken desperation is palpable.
Xi sees opportunity. The Iran conflict is a gift for China's geopolitical standing. As the United States appears increasingly erratic and unreliable to the world, Beijing positions itself as the steady guardian of global order. The war has also pulled US military resources toward the Middle East, with two aircraft carrier strike groups now deployed there instead of defending Taiwan and regional allies from potential Chinese aggression.
For China, there are real costs. Last year, about 80% of Iranian oil shipments went to Chinese buyers, supplies now disrupted by US naval blockade. As the world's largest crude importer, Beijing needs the Strait of Hormuz open and secure. China is actively pushing both Iran and the US toward negotiation, drawing on its 2023 success brokering a Saudi-Iran deal.
The central question haunting this summit is what Trump might concede. Weakened and outmaneuvered, would he trim US support for Taiwan to buy Xi's help on Iran? The concern is not theoretical. Trump has made contradictory and often alarming statements about Taiwan, recently suggesting a Chinese invasion was something he had little control over.
Taiwan sits at the heart of Xi's legacy ambitions. Pentagon planners estimate China's expanding military could be ready to attempt invasion as soon as next year. Taiwan's forces are vastly outnumbered, and its political parties remain divided over defense spending and whether closer ties with Beijing might offer safety through accommodation rather than resistance.
The official US position is that policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged and favors maintaining the status quo. But Trump's record on the issue is checkered. His statements veer between ambiguous and unsettling, and his reputation for sudden reversals haunts both Taipei and Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, all watching to see whether the president will sacrifice long-standing commitments for short-term gains in his bilateral relationship with Xi.
China is already providing Iran with dual-use chemicals for ballistic missiles, satellite intelligence about US military positions, and assistance with sanctions evasion, according to conservative US research institutions. If Trump's summit fails or if he resumes bombing Iran, Beijing has the option of expanding that support covertly, prolonging the American quagmire indefinitely.
The optics cut both ways. Trump wrote to Xi last month requesting assurances that China would not arm Iran further. He says he received them. But trust between the two men is not the issue; leverage is. And on that measure, Xi holds nearly all of it. The president has crippled US standing in Asia through Middle East fixation while compromising his military capacity to defend Taiwan. His own 2026 defense strategy identifies deterring China in the Indo-Pacific as primary. Yet he has handed Beijing strategic advantage through his own mismanagement.
For allies like Japan and South Korea, the summit carries existential weight. If Trump trades away Taiwan's security or scales back US military commitments in exchange for favorable trade deals or Chinese pressure on North Korea, the entire post-World War II security architecture in the Pacific could shift. Trump's flakiness on these issues is not reassuring.
Author James Rodriguez: "Trump goes to Beijing as a supplicant pretending to be a dealmaker, and Xi knows exactly how weak his hand really is."
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