Xi Summit
Trump and Xi meet at the White House and claim trade progress, while dodging Taiwan, AI and the Iran war.
"A great meeting." That's how President Trump described his Thursday sit-down with Xi Jinping, capping months of trade tension.
Earlier Thursday, Trump greeted Xi with a military review in the Rose Garden and a flyover, ABC News reported. He hadn't been back since 2015. Trump called him the first Chinese leader to make a second state visit to the United States.
The two leaders spent about 90 minutes behind closed doors before a state dinner in the East Room, ABC News reported. Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tesla's Elon Musk, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and former Apple chief Tim Cook were among the guests, ABC News said.
By evening, press access was chaos. A federal judge had ordered CNN, Politico and MS NOW readmitted after Trump banned them last week, but the outlets said guards turned reporters away from the dinner anyway, BBC News reported. All three had been let back in Thursday morning, only to be blocked again that night.
Xi told Trump the two countries' interests run deeply intertwined, calling for their competition to stay "healthy," the Guardian reported. He called for cooperation to avoid the "Thucydides trap," the historic pattern in which a rising power and an established one drift toward war. The two economic teams struck a new joint trade agreement, Xi said, calling it good news for the global economy, according to the Guardian. Neither leader announced breakthroughs on artificial intelligence, trade, Taiwan or the Iran war.
Xi asked Washington to oppose "Taiwan independence" and handle the island with care, the Guardian reported. On Iran, he said Beijing backs a return to a June agreement meant to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Airlines for America, the trade group for U.S. carriers, opposes adding more direct flights from China, though Xi suggested it might happen, the Guardian reported.
Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, are set to join Trump and Melania Trump for tea and a tour of the National Archives on Friday, ABC News reported. He leaves Washington later that day.
China welcomes American companies, Xi said. He added he hopes Chinese companies are "treated fairly" in the United States.