When President Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, it will look like another great-power summit. It is anything but. The balance has shifted — and not in Washington’s favor.
Trump goes with a weakened hand as the Iran war has boomeranged into a global energy shock. The visit, delayed from March to May as the conflict escalated, is less a show of strength than it is damage control.
The geopolitical landscape has shifted markedly since Trump and Xi first agreed to the Beijing summit last October.
The immediate source of weakness is the war itself. What Washington billed as a short, decisive campaign against China’s closest Middle Eastern partner has instead exposed systemic vulnerabilities in the American way of war, offering Beijing a real-time tutorial in how to exploit them.
Iranian reprisals degraded U.S. air defenses, blinded early-warning systems and left many of its 13 regional bases inoperable. Low-cost drones and missiles imposed disproportionate costs. Chokepoints became contested.
Just as consequential is the drain on U.S. munitions. Precision interceptors, missiles and other high-end systems have been consumed at a pace that has forced the Pentagon to divert stockpiles from Asia, thinning deterrence in the Indo-Pacific just as China’s coercive power expands.
Replenishment will take years, not months. And the problem is not just quantity — the war has exposed deeper weaknesses such as vulnerable forward bases, the difficulty of countering drone swarms and how quickly maritime superiority erodes in narrow seas.
These are not abstract lessons for Beijing. They are a playbook.
The Iran conflict has shown China how asymmetric tools can blunt a superior military, and how control of chokepoints can yield leverage without full-scale war. The implications are clear as Beijing plans for contingencies along the First Island Chain — from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines — which it views as a U.S.-led line of containment.
For Washington, the lesson is sobering: a two-theater posture may be far harder to maintain than had been assumed.
The U.S. economic picture is just as troubling. The war has triggered an energy shock that is feeding inflation and eroding political capital. Gasoline prices now shape the White House’s strategic calculus as much as battlefield outcomes.
Trump’s bargaining position is thus tied to his need for relief — relief Beijing is uniquely positioned to facilitate, whether through its leverage over Iran as its main oil customer or its central role in global supply chains.
In April 2025, in response to Trump’s tariffs, Beijing effectively pulled a geoeconomic kill switch by halting most exports of rare earth minerals — critical inputs for high-tech production. Washington was forced to climb down and negotiate a truce.
This is the context in which Trump’s China policy has shifted — from confrontation to accommodation.
In his first term, Trump recast China as a strategic adversary, launched tariffs and made the Indo-Pacific central to U.S. strategy. He revived the Quad and treated economic interdependence as a vulnerability.
In his second term, that posture has softened. Planned tariffs have been paused, punitive measures shelved and rhetoric cooled. Even baseline steps — such as arms sales to Taiwan — have been delayed. As the administration now frames it, Trump seeks “stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations” with China.
The shift is unmistakable. The U.S. remains deeply reliant on Chinese inputs, not least rare earths, and Beijing has shown it will weaponize that dependence. At a moment of depleted munitions and economic strain, the risk of disruption is a constraint Trump cannot ignore.
Trump now needs China — a major financier of U.S. government spending — in ways he did not in his first term. Then, a strong economy allowed escalation. Now, stagflation makes confrontation costly. The White House needs stable supply chains, and cannot risk Beijing weaponizing its U.S. Treasury holdings as U.S. borrowing rises.
That dependence reframes the summit. Trump is going not to dictate terms but to seek relief — on energy and financial stability and a political “win.” Chinese cooperation will not come cheap.
Beijing’s leverage is substantial. It has cushioned its energy vulnerabilities through stockpiles and overland pipelines from Russia and Central Asia, while deepening ties with Moscow. China can afford patience, and will trade only for advantage.
Export controls are a prime target. Beijing will push to ease restrictions on advanced semiconductors and AI. Extending the trade truce will be framed as stabilizing but will lock in Chinese gains.
The most sensitive domain is security — above all, Taiwan. The concern is not a dramatic “sell-out,” but gradual erosion: fewer arms sales, quieter naval operations, more ambiguity. In a transactional framework, such concessions can be traded piecemeal. Over time, they shift the balance.
The Iran war has sharpened these concerns by exposing Taiwan’s vulnerabilities. Highly dependent on imported energy and with limited reserves, Taiwan is exposed to sea-lane disruption. The lesson of Hormuz — that chokepoint control can impose pressure without invasion — will not be lost on Beijing.
All this points to a stark conclusion: Trump’s visit comes on terms that favor China. The likely outcome is a managed detente — a cooling of rhetoric and a symbolic reset. Trump will present it as deal-making prowess; Xi as proof of China’s rise. Both will claim success.
But the underlying shift will endure. A rivalry of near-peers is giving way to something closer to a creditor-debtor dynamic, in which Washington seeks relief and Beijing sets terms. Beijing can wait. Washington cannot.
In geopolitics, as in markets, timing matters. Trump is going to Beijing at the wrong time, and with fewer cards than he would like. The question is not whether he can strike a deal, but what he will give up to get one.
Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.“
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