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Donald Trump is heading to Beijing for his first state visit to China since 2017, with a summit alongside Xi Jinping scheduled for May 14-15. The agenda reads like a geopolitical greatest hits album: trade war negotiations, Taiwan tensions, Iran’s Strait of Hormuz, AI safety, and rare earth minerals.
What’s actually on the table
The summit’s core agenda spans five major areas, each carrying its own weight. Trade relations sit at the top of the list, with both sides looking for some version of a truce in a tariff conflict that has rattled global supply chains for years. Taiwan remains the most sensitive diplomatic tripwire in the relationship. And Iran’s Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply, adds an energy dimension that neither leader can afford to fumble.
Then there’s the tech angle. AI safety regulations and access to rare earth minerals, both areas where China holds significant strategic leverage, round out the discussion topics. China controls a dominant share of global rare earth processing, which makes it a gatekeeper for the materials that power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles to certain mining hardware.
The geopolitical landscape has shifted considerably since the two leaders last shared a stage at the 2025 APEC summit. Trump has reversed clean energy subsidies in an effort to bolster US competitiveness through a different industrial strategy. China, for its part, maintains strategic relationships with Iran that could prove essential to any resolution around the Strait of Hormuz.
Managing expectations
The more realistic outcome involves incremental progress: potential trade forums, preliminary agreements on rare earth minerals and energy purchases, and carefully worded statements that give both sides room to claim victory without committing to anything transformative.
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