President Donald Trump will welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping to Washington for a state visit as the pair seeks to deepen their personal relationship and maintain some future stability.
The governments — which at times have been adversarial — have made slow progress on the tangible commitments agreed to in May when Trump visited Beijing. But the countries remain locked in strategic competitions bubbling beneath the surface of the leaders’ relationship. And it’s unlikely, according to experts and current and former U.S. officials who spoke with The Washington Sun, that a big breakthrough on the most profound sticking points will come during Xi’s visit.
“I think the status quo with China is not great by any stretch, but it’s better than the alternative: a tariff war and a limited supply of our rare critical minerals,” said one U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. “So I think that the expectation is it’s mostly going to be kicking the can.”
When Xi touches down Wednesday evening at Joint Base Andrews, it will kick off a couple of days of intense diplomacy. The world leaders last saw one another in May, when Trump traveled to Beijing for three days of events in which the Chinese regaled him with pomp and red carpets. That olive branch is expected to be reciprocated by the United States, which is preparing to pull out all the stops.
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“The optics and the pageantry are really the point of this trip” — to show the strength of Xi and Trump’s relationship, Sara Schuman, a former senior U.S. negotiator for China trade and managing director at Beacon Global Strategies, told The Sun. The optics, she said, will likely “exceed the commercial deliverables.”
“The relationship is the circuit breaker that’s needed to manage the tensions beneath the surface, so they don’t break through,” Schuman said.
It’s expected to be an eventful summit — crammed with tours, military displays and meals — to fulfill Trump’s long-held desire to bring Xi back to Washington. Though Xi was in the United States in 2023, the Chinese leader’s last state visit was in 2015, during the Obama administration. It occurred coincidentally on the same dates — Sept. 24 and 25 — that he’ll visit with Trump.
Following Wednesday’s arrival ceremony, Trump and first lady Melania Trump will host Xi and his wife, Madam Peng Liyuan, at the White House on Thursday. They’ll hold a ceremony on the South Lawn and state floor, marked by 479 military personnel representing all branches of the U.S. military, according to the Office of the First Lady.
The Marine Band will play the Chinese and U.S. national anthems, and a flyover by a B-2 stealth bomber and four F-22 Raptors will highlight a military display in a Rose Garden ceremony before a bilateral meeting takes place.
Trump and Xi are scheduled to address the crowd at Thursday evening’s state dinner. Prominent technology industry leaders are expected to attend, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, according to a senior U.S. official.
“The Chinese are reluctant to have top officials come to Washington for anything other than a state visit, and it has to be treated like it. It has something to do with their sense of protocol and standing. And so a state dinner is an essential component of a state visit, along with all the bells and whistles,” said Daniel R. Russel, who served as the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs during Xi’s 2015 state visit.
The summit will wrap up on Friday with a tour of the National Archives and America’s founding documents, after the Trumps host Xi and his wife for tea at the White House.
Not everyone favors the expected display of extravagance, including some of Trump’s allies. Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) said in a floor speech on Tuesday that he “would have suggested the president not invite [Xi] to Washington for such a lavish welcome here in the United States” if Trump had asked the senator, calling Xi a “brutal, unelected and oppressive dictator.”
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
During Trump’s May trip to China, the leaders agreed to a one-year truce of sorts, called “strategic stability.” It aimed to prevent an escalation of tensions or a deliberate chokehold on critical commodities like U.S. export controls or China’s rare earth minerals. And that truce came with three broad agreements on issues central to the White House’s goals.
U.S. officials said the two countries agreed to set up both a board of trade and a board of investments. The officials also said China would address Washington’s concerns over the supply chain for critical and rare earth minerals in addition to agreeing to purchase $17 billion worth of American agricultural products, prorated for 2026, in addition to commitments China had previously made to buy soybeans — a deal the Chinese said was never confirmed. And Trump said China had agreed to make an initial purchase of 200 American-made Boeing aircraft.
Of the three, the agreement to create a board of trade has seen the most significant movement, experts tracking the progress say. When first announced, the White House said in a document the board of trade would allow both countries “to manage bilateral trade across non-sensitive goods.” The U.S. set up a public comment period for the proposed board, a necessary step toward formally establishing it. And American officials seem poised to roll it out, coupled with some tariff relief.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested as much in a Monday interview, telling CNBC that both sides discussed lowering tariffs on “noncritical” items.
But there has been no public movement on the board of investment, which the White House said was intended to provide a forum to discuss “investment-related issues.”
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said this week during an interview with Fox News that China has made progress toward buying the 200 Boeing planes initially agreed upon, but no purchase has been announced. Trump has said the deal eventually was expected to be for 750 planes, though Greer did not mention anything about additional aircraft. The U.S. official said the deal had been on thin ice after disagreements between China and Boeing. The White House initially touted the agreement as a significant victory for the Trump administration because it had been years since China purchased Boeing planes.
“There’s a long history of teeing up ideas and possibilities and then sort of at the eleventh hour the Chinese will come in with some condition and crater it essentially,” said Russel. “It’s done for strategic reasons. It’s the way they operate to try and keep everything all balanced and so they can, in part, test what the U.S. really wants.”
Concerning the agricultural agreement — the issue perhaps most closely aligned with the president’s domestic agenda — those tracking the purchases say China has made significant progress buying soybeans from American farmers. As of Sept. 11, the American Soybean Association estimates Chinese buyers have ordered 15.5 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans this season. China committed to buy at least 25 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans this marketing year.
But agricultural purchases outside of soybeans are lacking. Ishan Bhanu, the lead agricultural commodities analyst at the data firm Kpler, says other American products China would likely buy include corn, wheat, cotton and peanuts. Bhanu said those purchases have been slower to materialize, with only $3 billion bought so far — equating to roughly a half-billion per month.
“When we cut the data — call it pro-rated since May or since June — anyway we look at it, there has been no progress towards this commitment,” Bhanu said. Bhanu said corn is the only commodity that China buys in excess that would meet its commitments. But the large amount needed would send corn prices in both the U.S. and abroad skyrocketing, he said, creating an additional problem for the countries.
The fight over critical minerals and the supply chain remains the issue on which the U.S. and China have struggled to bridge their gap. Two sources say the Trump administration believes China has done the bare minimum to live up to the May agreement, which the document circulated by the White House said would also address U.S. concern about China blocking Americans from purchasing rare earth production equipment.
“No surprise,” the U.S. official said, adding that China doesn’t “live up to their commitments, ever.”
Schuman predicted that the lack of progress on addressing the critical mineral issue would factor into whether the U.S. extends the one-year “strategic stability” truce.
Ultimately, Xi’s visit is significant, though it’s expected to produce less-than-significant results. But any progress at all could be enough for the Trump administration to consider it a win, according to multiple people familiar with the relationship.
Ryan Hass, who served on the White House National Security Council from 2013 to 2017, said achieving small diplomatic gains would be a positive development, given the precarious dynamics between the world’s preeminent superpowers.
“I don’t think there will be any great surprises,” said Hass, who is now the director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. “President Trump is just preternaturally predisposed to highlight and tout the fact that China wants to buy American products.”
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