Trump Xi Summit: Pomp, Power and Trillions at Dinner

Military pomp, a tug-of-war over global power, trillions of dollars in tech wealth around the table and an opulent state dinner at the White House: The Trump Xi summit is bringing Chinese President Xi Jinping (73) to Washington for a mega-meeting with Donald Trump (80) — just months after the U.S. president himself received the red-carpet treatment during a three-day visit to Beijing. The United States and China are the world’s two dominant economic powers and together account for more than 40 percent of global economic output. Their military rivalry increasingly defines the balance of power from the Pacific to space and artificial intelligence. Trump has embraced the language of a possible U.S.-China “G2.” A league of their own.

Trump is planning the full royal treatment for the man he repeatedly calls his “good friend.” He wants to impress him. In an unusually personal gesture, Trump will travel to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to greet the Chinese Communist Party leader directly on the tarmac when he arrives Wednesday. It is a rare break with normal presidential protocol, under which visiting leaders are typically welcomed at the White House. First Lady Melania Trump (56) explained the gesture by saying her husband and Xi have “a great relationship” and that Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan (63) should be welcomed “with the most respect.”

Trump Xi summit becomes a military spectacle

Thursday’s main program is tightly choreographed. At the White House, Xi will receive an elaborate arrival ceremony followed by a military review. Nearly 480 U.S. service members are expected to participate, while the spectacle will culminate in a flyover featuring a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and four F-22 Raptor fighter jets. It is the kind of display Trump loves: American military power presented at maximum volume and maximum visual impact.

Then comes the state dinner in the East Room. But the lavish welcome has also triggered criticism from within Trump’s own Republican Party. Sen. Roger Wicker (75), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, questioned why Xi was receiving such an extravagant reception, pointing to China’s military buildup, Beijing’s support for Iran and the authoritarian nature of the Chinese political system.

Behind all the ceremony, however, lie cold calculations of power.

Trade, chips and Taiwan dominate the agenda

The bilateral talks are expected to focus on extending the fragile U.S.-China trade truce, export controls, semiconductors, artificial intelligence and American access to Chinese critical minerals and rare earths. Washington and Beijing remain deeply dependent on each other economically even as they compete for technological and geopolitical dominance. U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods previously climbed as high as 145 percent during the trade confrontation, while Beijing used its dominant position in rare-earth processing as leverage against Washington.

Geopolitical flashpoints will also hang over the talks: the Iran conflict, Russia’s war in Ukraine and, above all, Taiwan. Beijing considers the democratic island part of China and has repeatedly refused to rule out the use of force to bring it under its control. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has increasingly treated Taiwan policy as part of its wider bargaining relationship with Beijing.

Major breakthroughs are not expected. The summit is, to a large degree, about symbolism: stability, stature and the image of the world’s two most powerful leaders treating each other as equals. Analysts have repeatedly described the meeting as heavily focused on optics rather than sweeping agreements.

A $21 trillion tech table

And the guest list for Thursday night makes that symbolism even more dramatic. America’s tech elite is expected at the “State Dinner”: Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Michael Dell of Dell Technologies, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Tim Cook of Apple are among the names announced for the event.

Together, the publicly traded companies represented by those executives have a combined market capitalization of roughly $21.5 trillion based on current market values — about four times Germany’s annual economic output. OpenAI’s private valuation would push the broader corporate value represented at the table even higher.

That makes the dinner table itself a demonstration of American economic power: some of the richest and most influential technology executives on Earth sitting alongside the presidents of the United States and China.

AI could be the most dangerous topic of all

THE top technology issue, however, is the one increasingly frightening governments around the world: artificial intelligence. Trump wants the United States to remain ahead of China at almost any cost. He has repeatedly framed the race for advanced AI — which he now prefers to call “super intelligence” — as a competition America has to win. Beijing is racing just as aggressively to close the technological gap.

But beneath the competition, officials on both sides are exploring whether some Cold War-style guardrails are needed. The United States has proposed a crisis-communication mechanism that could allow Washington and Beijing to contact each other rapidly in the event of a serious AI-related incident. The concept is increasingly being compared to a kind of technological “red phone” — a modern equivalent of the emergency channels created between nuclear superpowers during the Cold War.

The logic is simple: The U.S. and China may continue racing for dominance in AI, chips and military technology, but both have an interest in preventing an autonomous system, cyberattack or catastrophic technical failure from triggering an unintended confrontation.

A “Terminator” moment remains science fiction. But preventing one could become one of the most serious issues discussed between the world’s two most powerful rivals.