Trump just gave China’s president exactly what he wanted.

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The best thing to say about the U.S.–China summit in Beijing on Thursday and Friday is that our allies’ worst fears didn’t come true. Aside from that, President Donald Trump failed to fulfill his fondest hopes for the meeting, while his host, President Xi Jinping, accomplished his own bedrock goals, though not much more.

Going into the much-ballyhooed session between the world’s two most powerful men, many Asian and European leaders worried that Trump would relax America’s security commitments to Taiwan in exchange for great trade deals that might boost the U.S. economy and his sagging poll ratings back home.

Apprehensions were heightened in the days leading up to the summit because Trump had put off signing a $14 billion arms sales package to Taiwan, explicitly to avoid angering Xi—and possibly to use the package as leverage for some U.S. advantage.

In the end, Trump made no concessions on Taiwan—though neither did Xi offer any lavish trade deals, at least as far as we now know.

Trump boasted to reporters after the summit that he and Xi had made “fantastic” deals, but the only example he cited—Xi’s agreement to buy 200 jet planes from Boeing—was less than impressive. Boeing stock plunged by 4 percent because shareholders had anticipated that China would buy 500 planes.

The American president brought along a bevy of high-tech executives from not only Boeing but Apple, Nvidia, Blackstone, Citibank, GE Aerospace, Meta, Goldman Sachs, and Visa, as well as his on-again, off-again political comrade, Elon Musk. If any of these corporate chiefs signed a deal with anyone, nobody has revealed it. (Not even the claim of a much-reduced Boeing sale has been confirmed by either Boeing or the Chinese.)

Shortly before the summit, on social media, Trump explained his invitation to these corporate leaders by saying that he would “be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to ‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic, and help bring the People’s Republic to an even higher level!”

This post reflects a stunning misreading of Xi’s vision of China’s place in the world. Far from regarding himself as an apprentice in this partnership, in need of corporate America’s guidance, Xi sees the United States as a declining empire, and, to the extent he values imports from Western firms, it’s mainly for negotiating access to—or outright stealing—their technical secrets.

Trump’s praise of Xi—in the social media post and many more times during the summit itself, lauding the Chinese dictator as a “great leader” and “really a friend“—only reaffirmed Xi’s main goal in this summit: to solidify China’s standing as a peer power of the United States.

This impression must have been bolstered further by the Iran war, in which the U.S. military hit more than 13,000 targets yet failed to topple Tehran’s regime or destroy many of its missiles—and, at the same time, depleted a high percentage of its own very expensive air-defense weapons in the course of shooting down Iran’s much cheaper drones. (China’s military has many shortcomings, but its main strategy in a war would be to fire swarms of drones and missiles at U.S. warships, saturating their defenses—an approach that the Iran war seems to vindicate.)

This past week’s two-day summit barely addressed the many issues dividing the two countries. The fate of Taiwan was mentioned, but not much more than that. Xi raised it as the first item on his agenda, right after the festive red-carpet welcome, which he must have known would put Trump in a receptive mood. Mishandling the issue—by which he meant recognizing the tiny democratic island as an independent nation rather than a part of the People’s Republic—could trigger “clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire [U.S.-China] relationship in great jeopardy.”

Along with many other countries, the U.S. observes a policy of “strategic ambiguity” on this issue, having diplomatic relations with Beijing but not with Taipei—though, at the same time, providing security assurances to Taiwan’s survival, in the event of Chinese aggression, and even providing Taiwan with arms and military training.

Trump told reporters afterward that he and Xi discussed the pending $14 billion arms sales package to Taiwan, but said he would decide in the coming days whether to go through with it. Whatever Trump’s feelings about Taiwan, a thriving democracy of 23 million people, its survival—along with the arms package—is supported by American public opinion and a bipartisan majority of Congress.

On many issues, the “readouts”—publicly released official statements of what was discussed in a meeting—from the White House and from China differed substantially. The White House claimed the two leaders agreed that Iran should never have a nuclear weapon and that they would cooperate on opening the Strait of Hormuz; the Chinese version of events said only that they’d discussed the Middle East.

The White House document claimed they had discussed Chinese investment in U.S. industries, purchases of U.S. oil and agricultural products, and ending the flow of fentanyl precursors into the U.S. The Chinese readout mentioned none of these matters.

Fred Kaplan

Trump Is in a Trap of His Own Making

Neither side claimed that Trump and Xi talked about placing limits on artificial intelligence—which many see as one of the most crucial areas of competition between the two countries and dangers to the world. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who went along on the trip, said that the two sides would discuss the issue soon, though didn’t hint at when.

Nor are there reports that Trump mentioned China’s support of Russia in its war against Ukraine—even though, as the summit moved along, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his largest air attack ever against Ukrainian cities, launching 1,428 drones killing at least 24 civilians, between 8 a.m. Wednesday and 8 a.m. Thursday.

One reason for these omissions and inconsistencies is that Trump prepared for this summit in a way that few if any presidents have done before previous summits—which is to say, he barely prepared at all. Usually, the National Security Council holds interagency meetings—first among midlevel experts, then with Cabinet secretaries and the president himself—to hammer out positions on various major issues. Advance meetings are then held with counterparts from the other country to work out an agenda and to agree on as many issues as possible before the heads of state sit down to talk.

By contrast, Trump held no such meetings, not formally anyway. The list of officials and executives that he brought with him to Beijing included no China specialists, not even the few who hold key positions in the departments of State and Defense.

As usual, Trump thought that he could wing it and that his presumed friendship with Xi would pave the way for vast progress and profits, which he could brag about back home to boost the economy, maybe end the war in Iran, and in any case restore his popularity before this fall’s midterms.

Xi, who cares little about friendship, was interested only in preserving his power, reinforcing China’s growing stature, and, to the extent possible, ensuring that it can rise and flourish in a somewhat stable world.