Trump Hosts Xi for Final Day of State Visit

President Donald Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House on Friday for the third and final day of a state visit, capping a three-day diplomatic spectacle that produced a two-month extension of a fragile trade truce but few of the substantive breakthroughs experts had predicted. The two leaders, joined by their wives, met for tea in the Red Room before touring the National Archives to view America’s founding documents, according to NBC News, which covered the visit.

A Visit Heavy on Pageantry

Xi’s visit — his first U.S. state visit in more than a decade — unfolded across three days marked by extraordinary ceremony. Trump personally greeted Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, planeside at Joint Base Andrews on Sept. 23, the first time a U.S. president had gone to the base to welcome a foreign leader since 1962, when John F. Kennedy greeted British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Trump rolled out a red carpet not once but twice for Xi, and the leaders walked side by side down a 100-foot-long red carpet after Xi’s Air China plane landed, as NBC News reported.

The pomp was notable given Trump’s recent rhetoric. Just two months ago, he delivered a primetime speech accusing China of interfering in the 2020 election. He has repeatedly warned that Democrats would steer the U.S. toward communism — an argument critics said was undercut by his red-carpet treatment of the leader of the world’s largest communist country.

On Friday, speaking to reporters inside the Archives rotunda, Trump reflected on the contrast between the two nations’ histories. “But we’re very proud of our 250,” he said, comparing China’s 6,000-year history with America’s roughly 250 years.

At the Red Room tea, Trump struck an optimistic tone. “We’ve had a tremendous visit from two spectacular people, and we really enjoyed it, and I think we’ve made tremendous strides,” he said, adding that he believed U.S. farmers would be “very happy.” Xi said he expected to see Trump at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in China in November and at the G20 in Miami in December.

Trade Truce Extended, but Little Else

The most concrete outcome of the visit came before the leaders’ formal meetings. The U.S. and China agreed to extend their trade truce two months, from Nov. 10 to Jan. 10, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced. Bessent, who held an unscheduled meeting in Washington with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, said it was possible a larger economic package would be agreed upon by January, or that the current deal would simply be rolled over, according to NBC News.

Beyond the truce, expectations were deliberately modest. Experts said no substantive breakthroughs were expected on the core disputes dividing the world’s two largest economies — trade, Taiwan, artificial intelligence, and the Iran war. As NBC News reported ahead of the summit, Trump entered the talks in a weakened position, facing mounting inflation, falling approval ratings, an unpopular war with Iran and the prospect of a difficult midterm election.

That asymmetry was a recurring theme among analysts. “We have a president entering this playing a weak hand,” Mark Montgomery, a retired Navy admiral, said at a pre-summit event hosted by the FDD think tank, according to NBC News. “I’m not 100% sure President Trump knows he’s playing a weak hand. I am 100% sure that leader Xi knows Trump is playing a weak hand.”

China’s near-monopoly on rare-earth minerals and critical materials — essential for replenishing U.S. weapons stockpiles as the Iran war grinds on — has given Beijing significant leverage. “The United States doesn’t hold all the cards — in fact, maybe not even the preponderance of the cards,” Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, told NBC News.

Xi’s Message: Cooperation Over Confrontation

Xi used the visit to project a message of stability and partnership. In his remarks at the White House welcome ceremony, delivered in Chinese and published by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Xi said he came “to carry on friendship, expand cooperation, and improve the well-being of both peoples.”

“For two major countries like China and the U.S., cooperation benefits both and confrontation harms both,” Xi said, adding that competition “should be healthy and bounded, a race of catching up rather than a wrestling match of win-lose.” On artificial intelligence, he said both nations were “capable and responsible for developing and managing AI well, ensuring AI development stays controlled by humans and benefits the people.”

Xi also announced two goodwill gestures: China will send two giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shang, to the Atlanta Zoo, and will invite 100,000 American youth to visit China over the next five years.

Domestic Pushback and a Media Firestorm

The lavish welcome drew unusual public criticism from within Trump’s own party. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on the Senate floor that he would have advised the president against inviting Xi “for such a lavish welcome here in the United States of America, based on all of the troubling issues we have with President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told NBC News she thought the red-carpet treatment “was a little bit over the top.”

The visit was also shadowed by a White House media ban. Trump barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House grounds the week before, prompting the outlets to sue. A federal judge, Timothy Kelly, ordered their credentials temporarily restored, writing that the president’s directive was most likely unconstitutional. Yet reporters from the banned outlets were initially turned away from the state dinner despite the order, as NBC News reported. In solidarity, the other networks suspended video pool coverage of the president, disrupting live coverage of the visit. Trump told reporters the news coverage had nonetheless been “very fair.”

What’s Next

With the trade truce extended only until Jan. 10 and major disputes unresolved, analysts cautioned against reading too much into the summit’s symbolism. Writing ahead of the visit, Allen Carlson, an associate professor of government at Cornell University, argued that Trump was approaching the talks from a position of weakness. “A president who is negotiating from weakness but believes he is strong, just 40 days before an election his party could very well lose, is a dangerous thing,” Carlson wrote, in comments published by Cornell’s College of Arts & Sciences. “Who knows what deals he may be willing to make to declare himself a winner?”

Carlson was even more succinct about the summit’s likely legacy. “I think best-case scenario is it’s a blip,” he told NBC News, “and we move on, and the broader sort of issues that both countries are confronting continue to unfold.”

Trump and Xi are expected to meet again soon — at the APEC summit in China in November and the G20 in Miami in December — leaving both sides little pressure to resolve their deepest differences now. Whether the warmth on display this week translates into durable agreements, or merely defers harder choices, remains the central question.