President Trump strolled through the gardens of Zhongnanhai, the Chinese Communist Party's inner sanctum, marveling at the roses. Xi Jinping promised to send him seeds. It was the image Beijing and Washington both wanted the world to see: two leaders reconnecting as old friends, wrapping up a summit Friday with toasts and smiles after a decade of escalating tensions.
But that warm theater masked a far harsher reality. Nearly every structural force pushing the U.S. and China apart remained firmly in place, even as Trump and Xi publicly performed détente.
The summit produced tangible if modest wins. China committed to purchasing 200 Boeing jets, Trump announced. The U.S. Trade Representative said China pledged at least $10 billion annually in agricultural purchases over three years beyond existing soybean deals. Both sides are negotiating a joint "Board of Trade" to facilitate roughly $30 billion in non-sensitive goods transactions. These deals built on a trade truce struck last fall.
Trump declared the results triumphant. "We've made some fantastic trade deals," he said at Friday's closing meeting.
Yet even as the leaders ate their working lunch, the underlying hostility was impossible to hide.
Hawks vs. Handshakes
Trump's own administration had spent the days and weeks leading to the summit actively working to undermine the case for rapprochement. The State Department sanctioned three Chinese firms for providing satellite imagery used to help Iran strike U.S. forces in the Middle East. Treasury sanctioned multiple Chinese oil refineries for purchasing billions in Iranian crude. A White House memo from science adviser Michael Kratsios accused Chinese entities of "industrial-scale" theft of American artificial intelligence technology. Federal prosecutors unsealed charges against the mayor of Arcadia, California, for serving as an illegal agent of Beijing, timing the announcement for 48 hours before Trump landed.
Beijing responded by ordering its companies to ignore the U.S. sanctions.
Intelligence assessments painted an even darker picture. A U.S. intelligence evaluation reported by the Washington Post concluded that China was exploiting the Iran conflict to gain diplomatic, military, and economic advantage over the United States. The New York Times reported that Chinese companies were negotiating clandestine arms sales to Iran, routing weapons through third countries in Africa to obscure their origins.
Trump told Fox News that Xi had assured him China would not supply Iran military equipment. But then Trump added a telling caveat: "At the same time, they buy a lot of their oil there, and they'd like to keep doing that."
Xi did his part for the pageantry, warning Trump that mishandling Taiwan could create "an extremely dangerous situation" while simultaneously rolling out diplomatic hospitality. Beijing welcomed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who remains under Chinese sanctions for his earlier criticism of Beijing's human rights record. At Thursday's state banquet, Xi told Trump that China's "great rejuvenation" and "Make America Great Again" could advance "hand in hand."
Both leaders had practical reasons to maintain the facade. Trump needed to avoid economic shocks in an election year, especially after Xi's ban on rare earth mineral exports had crippled American manufacturing during previous trade hostilities. Xi likely calculated that "strategic stability" with Washington would buy space for China's own military modernization and technological ambitions.
The friendliness masked something else: both governments were working furiously behind closed doors to reduce their economic interdependence.
Chinese investment in the United States has collapsed from roughly $45 billion in 2016 to less than $3 billion last year, according to Rhodium Group, reflecting how thoroughly national security fears have poisoned capital flows. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two sides are discussing a framework to channel any Chinese investment toward non-sensitive sectors, a grim acknowledgment that Washington no longer welcomes Chinese money without suspicion.
Trump's pitch for closer economic ties collides with years of bipartisan American sentiment treating Chinese capital as a national security threat. The old patterns of commercial interdependence that once bound the superpowers are systematically being dismantled.
Two aging nationalist leaders, governing the world's most dangerous rivalry, spent the week performing a friendship their own governments seem unwilling or unable to sustain.
Author James Rodriguez: "The summit proves you can have warm personal chemistry at the top and total strategic hostility below it. That contradiction may be the whole ballgame now."
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