Trump and Xi open Beijing summit with trade, rare earths, and Iran on the table

President Donald Trump landed in Beijing on Wednesday evening, May 13, 2026, kicking off a three-day state visit that both governments had been preparing since China's Foreign Ministry announced the dates on May 11. The formal bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping is scheduled for May 14, with a state banquet also on the program. It's Trump's first visit to China since taking office in January 2025 and the first American presidential visit to Beijing in nearly nine years.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who carries Chinese sanctions from his time as a senator — arrived alongside Trump, becoming the first sitting US Secretary of State under Chinese sanctions to set foot in Beijing. China issued Rubio a new transliteration of his name to sidestep the entry ban. His presence signals that Taiwan and Iran — the two issues Rubio has been most vocal about — are firmly on the agenda.

The business delegation Trump assembled is the most prominent CEO contingent to accompany a US president to China in decades. The White House confirmed 16 executives would make the trip, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, and Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach.

The delegation's composition tells you what Trump is shopping for. Boeing CEO Ortberg is there because industry sources say Boeing and Chinese officials have been discussing a potential deal involving as many as 500 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft plus widebody jets — what would be the largest aircraft order ever recorded and Boeing's first major China purchase since 2017. Musk is there because Tesla's China operations depend on stable access to Chinese manufacturing and markets. Cook is there because Apple assembles most of its products in China through Foxconn.

The trade relationship these CEOs are navigating was remade by a bruising 2025 tariff war. Trump imposed tariffs that peaked at 145% on Chinese goods before both sides stepped back in the May 2025 Geneva deal. That agreement cut US tariffs to 30% on Chinese goods while China dropped its retaliatory rate to 10% on American goods. In November 2025, following a Trump-Xi meeting in Busan, South Korea, both sides extended the Geneva deal through November 2026.

The current effective tariff rate of roughly 30% is still the highest the US applies to any major trading partner, and critics note that neither the Geneva deal nor this summit is designed to address the underlying structural issues — China's state subsidies, overcapacity, and currency management — that US manufacturing workers say cost them jobs and wages.

China's most powerful bargaining chip at this summit isn't tariffs — it's rare earths. In April 2025, China's Ministry of Commerce placed seven medium- and heavy-rare-earth elements on its export control list: samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium, along with the permanent magnet materials made from them. These magnets are inside every electric vehicle motor, every F-35 fighter jet, and nearly every advanced semiconductor fabrication tool.

China suspended its October 2025 expansion of these controls for one year as part of the Busan deal, but the original Announcement 18 controls — covering the same seven elements — remain on the books. China controls roughly 60% of global rare earth mining and more than 80% of processing capacity. The US doesn't have an alternative supply chain that comes close to matching that output. USA Rare Earth CEO Barbara Humpton acknowledged: 'we're still a long, long, long ways away before we can declare any kind of partial victory in terms of developing a homegrown supply chain.'

The Iran war is the wild card that scrambled the summit agenda. On February 28, 2026, the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran targeting its nuclear and ballistic missile program. Iran responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of global oil supply normally flows. Fuel prices surged globally. A temporary ceasefire took effect on April 8, but Iran has since been charging tolls of over $1 million per ship transiting the strait.

China is Iran's largest trade partner and its top buyer of crude oil, giving Xi acknowledged leverage over Tehran that Washington can't replicate. On March 31, China and Pakistan jointly delivered a five-point peace initiative calling for an end to hostilities. A senior Chinese official's last-minute intervention helped secure the April 8 ceasefire. Trump said publicly he doesn't need Xi's help on Iran — but the Strait remains contested, and rising fuel costs are worsening US inflation and weighing on Trump's approval ratings.

Taiwan sits beneath the surface of every negotiation at this summit. Xi is expected to push Trump for a formal statement opposing Taiwan independence and restrictions on future US arms sales to Taipei. Secretary of State Rubio warned before the trip that nothing at the summit should 'destabilize' Taiwan or the Indo-Pacific region.

The CFR's analysis suggests Beijing views Taiwan concessions as the price of delivering what Trump wants commercially — a pledge to keep rare earths flowing, agricultural purchases, and Boeing orders. Congress has no formal role in approving executive agreements Trump signs at this summit, though any arms sales reduction would require notification to the Senate under the Arms Export Control Act.

The White House announced plans to create two new bilateral bodies: a US-China Board of Trade to manage commerce in non-sensitive goods, and a US-China Board of Investment to provide a government-to-government forum on investment issues. A senior US official cautioned that even if both sides agree in principle, the boards 'won't necessarily be in effect anytime soon' — the real work happens after the summit.

Analysts at The Wire China argue the Board of Trade announcement signals that the US has essentially given up on changing China's economic model and is settling for managed trade — a system where both governments set purchase quotas and resolve disputes diplomatically rather than through market competition.

US-China technology competition underlies every conversation about AI and chips at the summit. The Trump administration in 2025 added 65 Chinese entities to the Commerce Department's Entity List, restricting their access to American technology exports. The Bureau of Industry and Security issued a final rule in January 2026 shifting the licensing policy for Chinese AI chip exports from a presumption of denial to case-by-case review.

Beijing has accused Washington of 'industrial-scale' technology theft and called US AI export controls a form of economic coercion. Chatham House analysts noted in April 2026 that US export controls on AI chips 'are not the best bargaining chip' because China is rapidly building domestic alternatives.

The summit was originally scheduled for March 2026 but was delayed by the US-Iran war. Trump said publicly the trip to China will be 'a wild one.' Both governments have managed expectations: a senior US official said no major breakthroughs are expected, and the primary goal is stabilizing the relationship and demonstrating that the world's two largest economies can communicate during a global crisis.

CSIS described this as among the most consequential US-China summits since Nixon's 1972 opening to China, not because of expected agreements but because of the structural stakes: a military conflict in the Middle East, a contested trade system, and rival technological ecosystems that are pulling global supply chains toward decoupling.

History offers limited comfort to either side. The CFR's analysis of five decades of US-China summits found that headline announcements rarely survive implementation without sustained diplomatic follow-through. The 2020 Phase One trade deal — also framed as a breakthrough — resulted in China purchasing only 57% of the agreed US goods. The Busan meeting in October 2025 produced the tariff truce and rare earth suspension, but neither side resolved the underlying disagreements on Taiwan, technology, or China's state-managed economy.

The Heritage Foundation argued before the summit that any deal giving China concessions on Taiwan in exchange for commercial benefits would constitute a fundamental mistake. The AEI called it a summit that 'will actually matter' regardless of outcomes, because both leaders are making decisions that will shape the trajectory of global order for decades.