When Trump Meets Xi: Prepare for the Opening Gambit

Patrick M. Cronin

Politics, Americas

Top of the agenda: North Korea and trade.

The first summit meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping is the beginning of a process, punctuated by serious issues, separated by distinctly different negotiating styles. With these points in mind, the new American president can use the Mar-a-Lago meeting to set the tone and tenor of U.S.-China relations, kick start fairer trade, highlight some critical security priorities, and avoid falling prey to either the hubris that can afflict any summiteer or the traps set by Chinese tactics.

A Process, Not Decisive Single Moments

For all the buildup of this inaugural meeting, it is important to remember that diplomacy has more to do with managing relations over time than producing singular and monumental deals. The Mar-a-Lago summit represents the opening gambit—not the closing move—between Presidents Trump and Xi.

The U.S.-China informal encounter brings together the leaders of the most consequential of major-power relations in this decade and decades to come. But just because it is important does not mean it will lead to either a breakthrough or a breakdown in bilateral relations. A single summit seldom achieves the lofty altitude intimated by the word.

The very word summit lends itself to superlatives and hyperbole. Yet a lone meeting, especially an informal, get-acquainted gathering with little time for preparation or prenegotiated accords.

During the Cold War, U.S.-Soviet summit meetings captured worldwide attention because they brought together two men with the ability to initiate a world-ending nuclear exchange. Yet for all the fear and hype, the entire series of summit meetings that took place over more than three decades created more modest, if nontrivial, achievements of détente and a nuclear arms-control regime.

The key question is not what a single, loosely choreographed summit produces, but what it eventually leads to with respect to economic and security outcomes, as well as the general impact on regional and global order. And between trepidation about the impact of U.S.-China relations on the world economy and the end of Washington’s strategic patience over North Korean nuclear and missile proliferation, even the immediate issues to be discussed by the two leaders are substantial.

Weighty Economic and Security Issues

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