US President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing has yielded a package of Chinese commitments to purchase American soybeans, energy products, and aircraft, providing both governments with a foundation to stabilize relations after years of escalating trade conflicts, export controls, and geopolitical disputes.
The two-hour-and-fifteen-minute meeting between Trump and Xi also set the stage for Washington and Beijing to rebuild bilateral ties. Trump invited Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, to visit the White House on September 24.
Trump told Fox News on Thursday that Xi had committed to assisting the US on Iran and agreed to buy US soybeans, oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and other energy products. He said China would purchase 200 Boeing 737 jets.
A US official stated that Xi opposed the militarization of the Strait of Hormuz and any effort to charge a toll for its use, while showing interest in buying more American oil to reduce China’s dependence on the strait in the future. “Both countries agreed that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon,” the official said.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed that Washington had already secured a major soybean commitment from China, noting that one of the main agricultural pledges from the previous Trump-Xi summit remained in place. “And then soybeans, we have a very large purchase commitment from the Busan agreement for the next three years. So beans are really all taken care of,” he said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday. At the previous Trump-Xi summit in South Korea last October, China agreed to purchase 25 million metric tons of US soybeans annually over the following three years.
Geopolitical Shifts and Energy Deals
Global geopolitical situations have changed since Washington captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife in January and began blocking ships from entering or leaving Iranian ports in April. Some Chinese pundits said the Middle East conflicts and global supply chain tensions have made Trump’s energy purchase request easier for Beijing to accept.
Reuters reported on Thursday that Chinese Customs appeared to have renewed licenses for hundreds of US beef exporters, a move that would have restored market access for many plants whose permissions had expired over the past year. However, the Customs then reverted the registration status of those exporters to “expired” on its website. It was unclear why Beijing made those moves.
Before the trip, observers noted that Trump’s mission in China was straightforward: he wanted to help American farmers and manufacturers increase sales to China, giving Republican candidates a stronger economic message ahead of the mid-term elections in November. Other US goals included pressing China to stop buying Iranian oil or supplying Tehran with drone parts and missile-related materials, and calling for the release of Hong Kong pro-democracy businessman Jimmy Lai.
Media reports said the two governments are expected to hold further talks to cut tariffs on about US$30 billion worth of imports not linked to national security concerns. Meanwhile, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang’s last-minute hop onto Trump’s plane in Alaska to join the Beijing trip fueled market hopes that the two countries might have agreed on an arrangement allowing Chinese firms to import and deploy Nvidia’s H200 graphics processing units (GPUs). Reuters reported on Thursday that the US Commerce Department has cleared about 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia’s H200 chips, including Alibaba, Tencent, TikTok parent ByteDance, and JD.com. The US also approved Lenovo and Foxconn as distributors. Nvidia has not delivered any H200 chips to China, as Beijing has urged local firms to prioritize domestic chips over foreign processors. Details about possible shipments of H200 to China were not immediately available.
Xi’s Vision: National Rejuvenation Meets MAGA
For Beijing, Xi’s top priority at the meeting was to rebuild China-US relations and prevent heavy US tariffs from returning in early November 2026, after a one-year truce. Beijing also wants the Trump administration to stop arms sales to Taiwan and roll back tariffs and export controls on China.
At a banquet held in honor of Trump and his delegation, Xi said China-US relations concern the wellbeing of more than 1.7 billion people in both countries and affect the interests of more than eight billion people worldwide. He said both sides should rise to that historic responsibility and steer the giant ship of China-US relations steadily in the right direction. Xi framed his own national rejuvenation agenda and Trump’s “Make America Great Again (MAGA)” slogan as compatible rather than conflicting goals. “The people of China and the US are both great people. Achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand. We can help each other succeed and advance the well-being of the whole world,” Xi said in a toast.
In the US, MAGA is a Republican slogan closely tied to Trump. In China, Xi’s “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” refers to Beijing’s goal of making China wealthy, powerful, and central to global affairs by 2049, while reversing what the Communist Party calls a century of national humiliation by Western powers. The concept is also tied to Beijing’s goal of reunification with Taiwan.
“If the Taiwan issue is handled properly, the bilateral relationship between China and the US will be overall stable,” Xi told Trump in the official meeting on Thursday. “Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.” Safeguarding cross-strait peace and stability is the biggest common denominator between China and the US, he added, emphasizing that “Taiwan independence” and cross-Strait peace are as irreconcilable as fire and water. He urged the US side to exercise extra caution in handling the issue.
For more on the broader implications of the summit, see Trump-Xi Summit: A Chance to Reshape Nuclear Stability in Beijing and Soybeans on the Table in Beijing, but US Farmers Should Curb Hopes.
