US President Donald Trump departed China on Friday touting business deals that gave markets little to cheer, while Beijing warned Washington about mishandling Taiwan and said its war with Iran should never have started.
Trump’s visit to America’s main strategic and economic rival, the first by a U.S. president since his last trip in 2017, had aimed for tangible results to beef up his dented approval ratings ahead of crucial midterm elections.
The summit was filled with pageantry, from grand receptions with goose-stepping soldiers to lavish banquets and private tours of a secret garden, while Trump repeatedly heaped praise on his host, commenting on his warmth and stature.
“It’s been an incredible visit. I think a lot of good has come of it,” Trump told Xi at their final meeting at the Zhongnanhai complex, a former imperial garden housing the offices of Chinese leaders, before they dined on a menu of lobster balls and Kung Pao scallops.
But just before Friday’s meeting, China’s foreign ministry issued a blunt statement outlining its frustration with the United States and Israel’s war with Iran.
“This conflict, which should never have happened, has no reason to continue,” the ministry said, adding that China was supporting efforts to reach a peace deal in a war that had severely affected energy supplies and the global economy.
At Zhongnanhai, Trump said the leaders had discussed Iran and felt “very similar”, though Xi did not comment.
Trump had been expected to urge China to use its leverage with Iran to make a deal. But analysts doubt Xi will be willing to push Tehran hard or end support for its military, given Iran’s value to Beijing as a strategic counterweight to the US.
A brief U.S. summary of Thursday’s talks highlighted what the White House called the leaders’ shared desire to reopen the Strait of Hormuz off Iran, through which a fifth of global oil and gas once flowed, and Xi’s apparent interest in American oil purchases to pare its dependence on the Middle East.
“What’s notable is that there’s no Chinese commitment to do anything specific with regards to Iran,” said Patricia Kim, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution.
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Boeing shares slide on underwhelming deal
U.S. officials said they had also agreed deals to sell farm goods and made progress on setting up mechanisms to manage future trade, with both sides expected to identify $30 billion of non-sensitive goods.
There were scant details of the deals, however, and no signs of a breakthrough on selling Nvidia’s advanced H200 AI chips to China, despite CEO Jensen Huang’s dramatic last-minute addition to the trip.
Trump told Fox News that China had agreed to order 200 Boeing jets, its first purchase of U.S.-made commercial jets in nearly a decade, but that was far short of the roughly 500 expected by markets, and Boeing shares fell more than 4%.
“For the market, the summit can be strategically reassuring while underwhelming in substance,” said Chim Lee, senior China analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Chinese stocks slid on Friday as the summit between the leaders of the world’s top two economies produced few deals to excite investors.
The summit’s main achievement may be maintaining a fragile trade truce struck when the leaders last met in October and Trump suspended triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods while Xi backed away from choking off supplies of vital rare earths.
It has not yet been decided whether to extend the truce beyond its expiry later this year, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, accompanying Trump, told Bloomberg TV on Friday.
Such an extension would be “the most basic benchmark” for the summit, said the Brookings’ Kim.
Stark warning to Taiwan
Xi’s remarks to Trump that mishandling Taiwan, the democratically governed island Beijing claims, could lead to conflict, delivered a sharp, if not unprecedented, warning during a summit that otherwise appeared friendly and relaxed.
Taiwan, just 50 miles (80 km) off China’s coast, has long been a flashpoint in ties, with Beijing refusing to rule out use of military force to gain control of the island and the U.S. bound by law to provide it the means of self-defence.
“U.S. policy on the issue of Taiwan is unchanged as of today,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also traveling with Trump, told NBC News, adding the Chinese “always raise it … we always make clear our position and we move on.”
Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung thanked the United States on Friday for repeatedly expressing its support.
Rubio said Trump had brought up with Xi the issue of Hong Kong’s most vocal China critic, media tycoon Jimmy Lai, jailed for 20 years in February in the Asian financial hub’s biggest national security case.
Hong Kong affairs are an internal matter for China, the foreign ministry has said previously when asked about Lai, who has denied all the charges against him.
While they may not have clinched many deals, both sides celebrated a steadier footing in a relationship Xi called the most important in the world.
“We must make it work and never mess it up,” he said at Thursday’s state banquet.
