Trump Has Learned How to Deal With China

This week, China’s President Xi Jinping returns to Washington, DC, a city he has not visited since 2015. This will be Xi’s first time meeting with President Donald Trump in the White House itself, and Trump has rolled out the red carpet for his Chinese counterpart.

Ahead of the visit, much digital ink has been spilled trying to predict what the two leaders will discuss. Deservedly taking the spotlight are AI and its “shared risks,” Chinese EVs’ access to the U.S. market, and the fate of the trade truce negotiated at Busan last year.

But rather than forecasting exactly what might happen, a more worthwhile exercise is to consider how the U.S.–China relationship became a “quiet foreign policy success.”

Trump has drawn several key lessons from his first term, and his pursuit of a more deliberate strategy for managing the U.S.–China relationship has created new opportunities to advance American interests. 

The first lesson Trump seems to have learned is that the leader-to-leader relationship is fundamental to bilateral relations more generally. Often overlooked is that Trump is a New York City entertainer and socialite at heart. He knows the value of woo and a certain kind of hospitality. It’s in vogue among the U.S. foreign policy commentariat to dismiss or minimize Trump’s flash, but it seems to work in his favor when it comes to Xi.