President Xi’s State Visit to the United States of America: A Convivial Get-Together of the Leaders of the World’s Two Largest Economies
President Xi Jinping of China stepped off his Air China “special plane” during the evening of 23 September 2026, and directly onto a 100-foot-long red carpet that had been laid out on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, at the start of his three-day State Visit to the United States. President Trump was there in person to receive President Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan, rather than greeting them later on at the White House, as is usual. No American President has received a foreign leader directly off the plane since President Barack Obama welcomed Pope Francis at the same military base in September 2015. This was Xi’s first formal trip to Washington DC in eleven years, and his second State Visit to America.
The following day, the official State Arrival Ceremony, held on the State Floor of the White House, included a “gift exchange, Silent Drill Platoon review, military review, and flyover.” The flyover involved a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and four F-22 Raptor fighter jets. The two Presidents then proceeded to a summit meeting at the Oval Office. Much was expected of this meeting, particularly with regard to “major international regional issues including the situation in the Middle East, the Ukraine crisis, and the Korean Peninsula”, the status of Taiwan, and the universally important matter of regulation of artificial intelligence. The outcome of these discussions is unclear. Instead, a trade truce between the US and China, reached in Geneva in May 2025 and extended by a year to November 2026 at the first Trump-Xi summit in Busan, South Korea, in October 2025, was extended for a further two months through to 10 January 2027. As a result, tariffs on Chinese goods have been kept lowered and China continues to relax its enforcement of export controls on critical rare-earth minerals, which are essential to the manufacture of semiconductors, electric vehicles, and military equipment. A reduction in tariffs on certain goods was announced a day later. President Xi promised to send two more giant pandas to Atlanta Zoo. Nothing else of much consequence has been reported from the meeting, despite President Trump’s proclivity to readily proclaim his “triumphs.”
Following the summit, President Trump escorted Xi on a personal guided tour of the White House, taking in a colonnade lined by a gallery wall of American Presidents and the new 100-foot-long granite helipad on the South Lawn. Melania and Peng meanwhile visited the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art. The evening’s black-tie State Dinner turned out to be a gathering of CEOs from the tech, financial, and industrial sectors, alongside an assortment of White House officials, friendly media representatives, and Trump family members- representing those sections of the population who wield power in America today. The highlights of the three-course menu included yellow squash velouté, sesame-crusted sea bass on braised baby bok choy, and vanilla crémeux and honey ice cream made with honey from the White House-to add an American touch to a bill of fare created from a fusion of Eastern and Western cuisine.
On 25 September, the final day of the State Visit, the visitors had morning tea, to the accompaniment of a string quartet, in the Red Room at the White House. In the afternoon, Xi was taken to view America’s founding documents at the National Archives. The Chinese President departed thereafter, on a high note. The two Presidents will have two more face-to-face meetings this year-at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen on 18-19 November and the G20 Summit at the Trump National Doral Miami gold club in Florida on 14-15 December.
It would be premature to depict the State Visit as marking the beginning of a major reset of Sino-American relations, especially given President Trump’s repeated volte- face with respect to China and the lingering presence of a significant bipartisan anti-China lobby in the US Congress. Nevertheless, China remains one of the largest export markets for US goods and services, while the US is still the top destination for Chinese exports. An ongoing, and bruising, trade war between the two global economic superpowers meanwhile continues, including blanket and sector-specific tariffs, export controls, sanctions on specific Chinese entities (officials and businesses), and restrictions on investment and on the sharing of technology.
During Trump 2.0, US- China bilateral trade has contracted, largely due to declining US imports of Chinese goods, which has in turn lowered the US trade deficit in goods with China. The Chinese have taken opportunity of the American assault on global free trade to step up trade with willing partners in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America instead. Unlike the US, China has been steadily expanding its global influence through soft power and by making new, while speeding up its development of green technologies, while the US has resorted to hard power and to alienating its allies, as it reverts to a greater use of fossil fuels. It would be great for peace and stability in the world if the two superpowers were to de-escalate the trade war and continue to seek consensus on the pressing political issues of the day, but any hopes of lasting accord will have to be put on hold for a little while longer.
Ashis Banerjee