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Mark Magnier

US President Donald Trump’s landmark visit to China comes as the Iran war disrupts global energy supplies, fuels economic uncertainty and adds fresh strain to Washington-Beijing ties. In the latest part of a series examining how rivalry, interdependence and geopolitical crises are reshaping the relationship between the two powers, we look at how Trump’s weakened hand could tilt summit talks.
When next week’s summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was first proposed, Trump was riding relatively high and Xi was holding steady against his impetuous counterpart.
Six months later, Trump heads to Beijing politically dented and militarily overextended, factors that diplomacy experts, China analysts and former government officials say will shape the meeting’s tenor.
While summits are mostly about foreign policy, protocol and deliverables, dynamics back home underpin the negotiations.
“There’s no question that weakness on the domestic front puts a president in a precarious position on the global stage, especially when dealing with a leader like Xi Jinping. He not only senses that weakness but works to exploit it,” said former White House global engagement director Brett Bruen.
“China has been trying to position itself as the more reasonable actor among global superpowers. So this is a prime moment for him to both try and manipulate and outmanoeuvre the other.”
Traditionally, potential weak points are outlined in exhaustive briefing materials before high-stakes meetings. Trump is not traditional and tends to favour his “gut”, although power dynamics are hardly lost on him, even if he does not acknowledge them.


Behind closed doors, these could play out as reduced Chinese offers for soybeans or Boeing aircraft purchases and a stronger push for concessions on tariffs, Taiwan, export controls and the Iran conflict.
“You offer a series of demands, which the Chinese know that Trump is going to be desperate to hold up as a prize,” added Bruen, president of risk consultancy firm Global Situation Room. “This is something that Xi can dangle in front of Trump, albeit in terms not as advantageous as they would have been a year ago.”
A different economic landscape
The most obvious change since last October’s Trump-Xi summit is the war that Trump and the Israelis started against Iran; back then, the iconoclastic US president’s hunger for disruption was largely limited to trade.
Briefing reporters on the way back from South Korea last autumn, he said his muscular tariffs war had secured a year-long trade truce with Beijing and his global import tax policies were filling US coffers. Foreign companies would pay the tax, he insisted repeatedly.
Since then, Trump’s muscle flexing has morphed into actual war, deepening the alienation felt among US allies, further roiling markets and turning the quick conflict he envisioned into a slog.
“China’s negotiating position is stronger than it was in the fall on a number of fronts,” said Allen Carlson, associate professor at Cornell University. “Obviously and most prominently, we’re now in an extended conflict that doesn’t have an obvious endgame.”
Furthermore, the US Supreme Court ruled his signature tariff policy unconstitutional and denied his bid to delay or deny some US$166 billion in refunds. That has left him scrambling for a workaround requiring mandatory investigations, paper trails and an appeal process, curtailing his ability to set policy by tweet, even as a trade court on Thursday struck down a 10 per cent tariff stopgap he had imposed globally.
“The US still has substantial leverage,” said Felicia Pullam, a former Commerce Department trade expert now with Apco consultancy. “But the perception of leverage has taken a hit.”
Apparently unanticipated, Trump’s foreign military adventures have ricocheted back onto his “America first” domestic agenda, as higher gas prices and an unpopular war sour US voters ahead of the November midterm polls, leaving him weaker flying into Beijing.
“The Xi-Trump summit, if it finally is to materialise, will likely see a seemingly stronger Xi and surely much weakened Trump. This is largely because Trump has the sword of Damocles of the forthcoming midterm hanging over his head,” said Chen Jian, global history professor with New York University and NYU-Shanghai.
“As a political gambler, he has fewer cards in his hands than ever before. He needs Xi more than Xi may need him.”

Despite the war, Trump appears to welcome the summit as a way to counter the bad news, showcase himself on a big stage and grab some much-needed deliverables – such as they are – to show progress with disenchanted voters, analysts said.
This is not lost on China.
“They didn’t ask for the summit,” said Rana Mitter, US-Asia relations chair at the Harvard Kennedy School. “They feel they will have the advantage with the Americans coming to them.”
Trump’s US approval rating since October has fallen by over 10 percentage points to around 62 per cent, his lowest ever, with the economy, immigration and foreign policy flagging.
China does not allow detailed presidential polling – its sanctioned surveys often show 90 per cent satisfaction with the government.
Less easily quantifiable is the exhaustion factor Trump has engendered from Brussels to Beijing, driven by a White House characterised by upheaval, threats, retribution, distraction, personnel churn and limited regard for deliberation, which has frustrated planning-obsessed Chinese in advance of the summit.
“That’s obviously not Trump’s style,” said Jake Werner, programme director at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. China is “going to go forward and look for places they can come to an agreement, but they also are not very hopeful”.
That very different leadership approach has left companies struggling to plan, allies hedging their bets, and Xi looking increasingly like a model global citizen.
“One tenet of Xi’s approach is his emphasis on ‘maintaining strategic resolve’ in both domestic governance and international strategy,” said Guoguang Wu, a senior fellow with Asia Society’s Centre for China Analysis. “This contrasts with the extreme flexibility and fluidity of the Trump administration’s policies.”
China’s battles within: property slump, debt crisis
China is not without its own vulnerabilities, including a festering property sector, high local debt and a struggling job market amid toward an envisioned hi-tech driven growth model. In March, Beijing cut its gross domestic product expansion target to its lowest level since the early 1990s.
“A large part of China’s domestic problems comes with the fact that it’s very difficult to stimulate domestic consumption [linked to its closed capital account],” Mitter said. “The dilemma that China has is that it needs to improve its economy. But negotiations with the United States are unlikely to provide the magic key to allow that to happen.”
The fading of the aspirational Chinese dream, meanwhile, has heightened social fallout, particularly among younger people. Beijing paused the release of youth unemployment figures in August 2023, when they hit 21.3 per cent, and resumed their publication four months later – after adjusting the calculation to exclude students.
“Often we assume that surface stability is equivalent to acceptance. But people are unhappy here, and people are unhappy in China too,” Carlson said. “China has gotten very good at getting ahead of it, and obviously there are not elections, but public opinion matters in authoritarian states.”
“University students have been at the centre of political upheaval in China again and again over the past century, and highly educated urban youth tend not to support the status quo.”
Compared with Trump’s Iran war, however, most of these are slow-moving structural problems more easily hidden by a government with powerful market and media controls.
Xi has also benefited from recent headlines.
China’s GDP hit 5 per cent in the first quarter, exceeding expectations; Beijing’s diversification from US trade saw it book a US$1.2 trillion trade surplus in 2025, its largest ever; its tech self-sufficiency drive has gained momentum; and the nation’s soft power is on the rise as Washington’s declines.

“Trump is not going to poke the dragon, and conversely, Xi has to be feeling pretty good and confident about China’s position in the world, even if he’s uneasy about China’s economy and ability to keep it moving in a positive direction,” Carlson said.
But China also wants a summit to keep Trump on side without facing terribly onerous deliverables.
“The Chinese leadership prefers a stable and productive relationship with the United States so it can continue to focus on domestic modernisation and the economic challenges at home,” said Jessica Chen Weiss, China professor at Johns Hopkins University and a former State Department adviser.
Beijing would like to see Washington say it “opposes” rather than “does not support” Taiwan independence. And it does not want a major arms sale shortly after the summit, which happened last time, especially one larger than December’s record US$11 billion package.
“They think it’s possible Xi might get concessions or language on Taiwan that no other president has given them,” Mitter said. “But it doesn’t mean they’ll get what they want.”
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed by law to supplying it with weapons.
Beijing in confident mood as trade talks approach
China’s desire to be seen as on equal footing with the US is also in play, along with Beijing’s knowledge that it holds a powerful card in lithium and other strategic materials should Trump demand too much. Other issues on the table include potential investment and trade deals, illegal drugs, artificial intelligence, trade disruptions and the Strait of Hormuz.
“They feel a level of confidence they didn’t feel a year ago,” Mitter said. “They will assume, as happened last fall, if they have to, they can push critical minerals.”




But Trump also has some leverage. Even as China diversifies, it still depends heavily on trade with the US. It wants stability. And the US military has proven tactically, if not always strategically, impressive, checking China’s ties with Iran, Venezuela, Panama, the Gulf states and Cuba.
“Trump does see this as an opportunity to resolve issues directly with Xi,” said Irina Tsukerman, president of strategic advisory firm Scarab Rising. “He does think that he is coming in with some cards to play. He feels he may have an opportunity to put real pressure.”
But much of it will be about optics, pomp, headlines and transactional deals, rather than substantive measures that fundamentally reshape US-China trade relations or address long-standing security irritants.
“China is happy to give him a win and the theatre and optics,” Carlson said. “The likelihood of a major breakthrough is really quite remote.
“But it might not be a bad thing for President Trump to go over and have some photos taken in front of the Great Hall of the People. It’s one less thing to worry about in terms of an escalation.”


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Iran war, tariff setbacks and sliding US poll numbers reshape the balance going into next week’s high-stakes talks

Iran war, tariff setbacks and sliding US poll numbers reshape the balance going into next week’s high-stakes talks