Xi in Washington to confirm a stability Beijing formulated
Xi Jinping and Donald Trump met on September 24, 2026, in the Oval Office and emerged with a two-month extension of the Busan trade truce, through January 10, 2027. Taiwan, artificial intelligence (AI) and the war against Iran remain unresolved \u2014 and the \u201cstrategic stability\u201d Beijing formulated still amounts more to vocabulary than to a concrete deal.
Xi Jinping and Donald Trump met on Thursday, September 24, 2026, in the Oval Office of the White House, on the second day of the first state visit by a Chinese president to the United States in 11 years. Trump summed up the meeting in two words — “great meeting” — without offering details. Xi answered in the vocabulary Beijing had formulated for the visit: the two countries’ interests are “deeply intertwined,” he said at the White House.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News that both sides had agreed to extend by two months, through January 10, 2027, the trade truce struck in Busan in October 2025. Xi spoke of a “new trade arrangement,” without elaborating, the same agency reported, citing Xinhua. The ceremony measured 11 years of distance; the negotiating table measured two months of additional time.
What expires on November 10 — and what holds after that
The issue that has organized the agenda still has a date attached to it. The trade ceasefire struck at the Busan summit in October 2025, under which China committed to keeping rare-earth exports flowing in exchange for a cap on U.S. tariffs, is due to expire on November 10, 2026.
For Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, the most likely outcome of the three-day visit was an extension of that arrangement, alongside deals on specific goods such as agricultural products and Boeing aircraft that would build on commitments made at the May 2026 meeting in Beijing.
“Most of this will be theatre,” Kennedy told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the Australian public broadcaster, which also spoke to Chinese analysts who were optimistic about military-to-military dialogue and the establishment of a regular AI talks mechanism.
What emerged on September 24 was the extension, without the side deals. The short deadline says something about what the summit delivered: more time to keep talking, with rare earths and tariffs still bound to the same calendar.
Taiwan, in Beijing’s formulation
It was at the May 2026 meeting in the Chinese capital that the two presidents agreed on the formula of a “constructive relationship of strategic stability”, presented by China’s State Council as guidance for the next three years and beyond.
The arms package for Taiwan, valued at around US$14 billion, remains suspended, and Trump has treated it as a bargaining chip since the Beijing summit. Kennedy argues that Trump conceded in May 2026, when he pulled back on arms sales to Taiwan, and that Beijing secured what it needed before the summit: protection against renewed American escalation and progress on the Taiwan Strait question.
As of the close of this edition, the White House had published no readout of its own on the meeting.
AI stayed where it was
AI moved out of the regulator’s office and onto the summit agenda — but left the summit without a new agreement. Hours before receiving Xi, Trump wrote on Truth Social that AI would be a major topic of the conversation and that he wanted to “leave it exactly where it is”.
Xi answered at the welcome ceremony that both countries have “the capability and responsibility” to develop and manage AI for good, and that the technology’s development must remain “always under human control”.
The only new mechanism is designed to warn, not regulate. Bessent and Vice Premier He Lifeng agreed on September 20, in New York, on a bilateral early-warning mechanism for AI incidents, and met again on the eve of the summit at the World Bank headquarters to finalize preparations for the leaders’ meeting.
On the eve of Xi’s arrival, Alibaba unveiled the Zhenwu V900 accelerator in Hangzhou, which the company described as China’s most powerful AI chip, with mass production scheduled for the first quarter of 2027. It also announced plans to train Qwen models with 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters, according to Reuters and Quartz.
Hours earlier, in New York, Trump told the UN General Assembly that government documents would henceforth call the technology “super intelligence” and that Washington leads the contest “over China by a lot”.
Iran hovered over the table
The war against Iran hung over the visit. Trump asked China to support American efforts to isolate Tehran economically and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while Beijing — Iran’s largest trading partner — has kept channels open with both sides.
Differences over Iran, Taiwan and trade remain unresolved, the same coverage reported. At the White House, Xi said both countries must avoid the “Thucydides Trap” and pursue “a race of catching up with one another, not a wrestle in which one either wins or loses.”
Xi landed on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, where Trump waited for him on the tarmac, breaking with a protocol that American presidents almost never depart from. On Thursday, the 24th, the arrival ceremony gathered 479 members of the U.S. Armed Forces, followed by a military review in the Rose Garden and a state dinner.
The staging measured the distance between what the two governments say they have built since May 2026 and what the two leaders actually delivered.
Xi left Washington with the vocabulary he came to confirm and two more months on the calendar, and paid nothing for either: rare earths keep flowing, tariffs stay capped, the Taiwan package stays in the drawer and AI stays where Trump said he wanted it left. The next deadline, Jan. 10, 2027, arrives with the same three items open. The price of keeping rare earths on the market will be set in Beijing.