Trump Meets Xi in Beijing With Four Unsettled Disputes: Rare Earths, AI Chips, Taiwan, and a War

U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday for a 36-hour summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping — the first visit by an American president to China since Trump's own trip in 2017 — carrying an agenda dense with unresolved disputes: rare earth export controls that have disrupted American manufacturing, AI semiconductor restrictions that both governments are using as industrial weapons, Taiwan arms sales that Beijing wants withdrawn, and a war with Iran that has closed the Strait of Hormuz and sent global energy prices higher. The two leaders are scheduled to hold bilateral meetings on Thursday and Friday.

The summit arrives at a moment of structured imbalance. Analysts at the Council on Foreign Relations published an assessment today concluding that the two leaders are "pursuing very different objectives" — Trump needs visible, politically sellable deliverables before November's midterm elections; Xi is operating on a longer timeline and arrived at the table having already used rare earths to force concessions from Washington during the 2025 trade war. Chatham House described the U.S. list of concrete deliverables as "short": keep rare earths flowing, create a bilateral trade board for non-sensitive sectors, and secure Chinese purchase commitments on soybeans, aircraft, and energy. The gap between that short list and the length of the underlying rivalry, the institute noted, "reveals a shared preference for managing their competition rather than resolving it."

Here is what is actually at stake in each of the four issues on the table — and what a deal, or its absence, would mean for you.

Who Travelled With the President

Trump arrived with more than a dozen U.S. executives — a smaller group than the 27 who joined his 2017 China trip but one that maps almost precisely onto the summit's commercial agenda: semiconductors, aircraft, finance, agriculture, and energy. The delegation acquired its most newsworthy member at the last minute: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was not on the White House's published list as of Monday. After media coverage flagged his absence, Trump called Huang directly and invited him to join; Huang flew to Anchorage and boarded Air Force One during a refuelling stop on Tuesday. His addition — hours before landing in Beijing — was the clearest single signal of how central AI chip policy has become to the summit's agenda.

★ Added to delegation in Anchorage, Alaska, May 13, 2026

1. Rare Earths: The Lever Beijing Already Pulled Once

No issue arriving at the summit carries more raw structural weight than rare earths. China mines more than 60 percent of the world's rare earth materials and processes roughly 85 percent of global output. For 12 specific rare earth elements — including terbium and dysprosium, which are essential for the permanent magnets used in F-35 fighter jets, EV motors, wind turbines, missile guidance systems, and AI data centre hardware — China's processing share rises above 90 percent. There is no short-term substitute and no alternative processing base at comparable scale.

Beijing demonstrated how precisely it could deploy that leverage in April 2025, introducing a licensing requirement for seven heavy rare earths in retaliation for Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs. Rare earth magnet exports to the U.S. fell 93 percent year-on-year in May 2025. European prices for dysprosium and terbium reached up to six times Chinese domestic prices. Some U.S. and European automakers were forced to cut production. A second wave of controls in October 2025 — which would have extended Chinese licensing authority to any product containing even trace amounts of Chinese-sourced rare earths, wherever in the world it was made — was suspended until November 2026 as part of the Busan trade truce. That suspension expires in six months.

Foreign Policy reports that rare earth export volumes remain roughly 50 percent below pre-restriction levels despite the truce, as China's April 2025 licensing system — which requires case-by-case approval for the seven initially restricted elements — stayed in force at Busan. The CSIS Critical Minerals Security Program assessed in April that the U.S. is "still far from true resilience" on rare earth supply chains one year after the initial restrictions, having committed billions in emergency financing but lacking refining capacity at scale.

What would a deal look like? The CFR analysis published today anticipates "resumed rare-earth shipments" as among the most likely limited deliverables from the summit — a return to something close to pre-April 2025 volumes in exchange for U.S. concessions on tariffs or technology export rules. Xi's incentive to offer this is real: prolonged disruption also hurts Chinese producers who dominate global rare earth commerce. But Chatham House notes that Beijing has shown no appetite to permanently relinquish the licensing system that gives it this lever. Any deal is likely to be a managed pause, not a structural resolution.

2. AI Chips: A Race Neither Side Can Afford to Lose

Artificial intelligence semiconductors are simultaneously a trade dispute, a national security policy, and an industrial strategy — and this is the first Trump-Xi summit at which the private-sector executives most directly affected are sitting at the table. More than a dozen U.S. CEOs travelled with the president to Beijing, including Apple's Tim Cook, Tesla's Elon Musk, and Nvidia's Jensen Huang — a last-minute addition who boarded Air Force One in Anchorage after Trump called him directly. Their presence signals that Washington now treats AI industrial policy and diplomacy as inseparable.

The underlying numbers tell a stark story. The U.S. banned Nvidia's H20 chip — a capability-limited version engineered specifically to comply with export rules — from Chinese sales in April 2025, costing Nvidia a $5.5 billion inventory charge. The Trump administration reversed course in July 2025, permitting H20 sales, then licensed more advanced H200 chips for China in December. But Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told lawmakers in April 2026 that none had yet been exported because the Chinese government had not allowed its technology companies to purchase them — a reminder that export control policy now has two gatekeepers, not one. Chinese domestic alternatives from Huawei, Cambricon, and Alibaba's T-Head have continued to advance throughout the restriction period.

The Biden-era AI dialogues of 2023 and 2024 produced agreements to establish working-level communication channels and a commitment by both sides not to connect AI systems to nuclear command and control. CFR analysts expect this summit to build modestly on that foundation — new bilateral working groups on AI governance, perhaps, rather than binding restrictions. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the two sides may restart AI safety talks. Foreign Policy notes that China has taken a lead in deploying low-cost AI — including open-source models from DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI that have gained global traction — partly because its domestic alternatives are less expensive than American systems, even without access to Nvidia's most advanced chips.

The reader stake here is direct. If a semiconductor deal emerges — even a partial one restoring H200 access — it would affect the share prices of Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Micron, all of which are represented in Trump's delegation. If AI safety talks resume and produce a framework, it could set norms for how both governments regulate autonomous systems in ways that affect every company building on AI infrastructure. If talks collapse, the export restriction cycle — restriction, retaliation, partial reversal — is likely to continue.

3. Taiwan: What Trump Said on the Plane

Taiwan is the issue most likely to produce something alarming out of Beijing — and Trump has already said enough to put U.S. allies on edge. Asked on Tuesday whether the U.S. should continue selling weapons to Taipei, Trump told reporters: "President Xi would like us not to, and I'll have that discussion. That's one of the many things I'll be talking about." The comment was not a commitment. But the phrasing — acknowledging Xi's preference and signalling willingness to discuss it — was enough to alarm officials in Taipei.

The structural context: Washington approved an $11.1 billion arms package for Taiwan in December 2025 but has not yet delivered it. CFR's David Sacks notes that Xi may attempt to trade economic commitments — rare earth flows, commodity purchases, U.S. investment — for Taiwan-related concessions, including delays to that arms package or a rhetorical shift in how Washington discusses Taiwanese sovereignty. "What we are most afraid of is Taiwan being put on the menu," a senior Taiwanese official told Bloomberg ahead of the summit.

Even minor adjustments in wording could carry outsized consequences. Chatham House analysts caution that "what matters is the precise wording" of any post-summit statement — whether Trump reaffirms support for Taiwan's defence, sounds ambiguous on arms sales, or gives Xi any rhetorical opening to claim that Washington is restraining Taipei. Any softening of the standard "strategic ambiguity" formulation would be read by Beijing as a concession and by Taipei as an abandonment.

4. Iran: The Wildcard That Delayed the Summit

The Trump-Xi summit was originally scheduled for late March. It was postponed in mid-March because of the Iran war — the conflict that began on February 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched military strikes on Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of global oil trade flows, remains closed or severely disrupted. That closure has spiked global energy prices and contributed to the domestic inflation that is dragging Trump's approval ratings to second-term lows — which is part of why he needs Beijing's help and part of why Beijing knows it.

China is Iran's largest crude oil customer, purchasing more than 80 percent of Iran's exported crude. CNBC reports that some analysts believe the prolonged war has given China a positional advantage heading into the summit: Beijing has leverage over Tehran that Washington lacks, and Trump has acknowledged he wants Xi's help pressuring Iran to reopen the strait and agree to a peace framework. On Tuesday, Trump said he planned to have "a long talk" about Iran with Xi but did not expect it to be the central focus of their talks — a calibration that itself signals how much the U.S. needs China to move first.

CFR analysts note that U.S. and Chinese interests on Iran are more aligned than either side publicly admits: both want to avoid a prolonged Gulf disruption that destabilises global energy markets. About half of China's crude imports come from the Middle East. Quiet understandings on sanctions enforcement or diplomatic messaging to Tehran are therefore plausible even if no formal announcement emerges — and even a private commitment from Xi to press Iran toward de-escalation would represent a significant, if invisible, deliverable for Trump.

What to Watch For

The bilateral meetings are Thursday and Friday. Based on expert assessments from CFR, Chatham House, CSIS, and Brookings, the most probable outcome is a package of limited, choreographed agreements: an extension of the Busan trade truce (which expires in autumn), some movement on rare earth licensing volumes, headline purchase commitments on U.S. soybeans and possibly Boeing aircraft, and new bilateral working groups on trade and AI governance. Neither a comprehensive deal nor a public breakdown is considered likely.

The most consequential outcome might not be announced at all. A quiet Chinese commitment to use its influence with Tehran — or its absence — will become visible over weeks, not hours. And the precise language used on Taiwan in the joint communiqué, however anodyne it appears, will be parsed by governments from Taipei to Tokyo for any sign that Washington's longstanding commitments are shifting.

Results — or their absence — will be visible by Saturday morning Beijing time.