The Decibel - What’s on and off the table at Trump and Xi’s meeting

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

Chinese President Xi Jinping is in Washington this week for his first official state visit to the U.S. in 11 years. A lot has changed since then – China has become one of the world’s most dominant countries, while U.S. President Donald Trump has drastically altered global relationships with his trade war.The Globe’s Asia correspondent, James Griffiths, joins the show today. He’ll talk about the context at this meeting between Trump and Xi, what they’re expected to discuss and the elephants in the room neither of them want to talk about.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chinese president Xi Jinping is set to visit Washington this week. This is his first official state visit to the U.S. in 11 years. And the world has changed a lot in that time. China has gone from an emerging power to one of the world's most dominant countries. U.S. President Donald Trump has drastically altered global relationships with his trade war, including launching a tariff war on China. There are tensions around Taiwan, and the U.S. is pushing for China to use its leverage with Iran to help resolve the war.

So today, we're talking to James Griffiths. He's the globe's Asia correspondent. He'll give us some insight on this meeting between Trump and Xi, what they'll discuss, and what they might leave unsaid. I'm Manika Ram and Wems, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. James, it's so great to have you here in studio. Thanks for doing this. Thanks for having me. Can you give us a sense of the positions of both President Xi and President Trump going into these talks, James?

Who has, I guess, who has the upper hand here? I think if we're going to say that one party has the upper hand, it has to be Xi Jinping, almost purely because compared to Trump, he doesn't have so many domestic concerns. China has some economic issues. It is, you know, struggling to grow as fast as it once did. But he doesn't face any opposition at home. Whereas when you look at Trump, obviously he has plummeting popularity. in the U.S. and is bogged down with overseas engagements. Okay, so those dynamics may come into play when they're actually having these discussions then.

Absolutely. You know, she is not kind of answering to a domestic audience in the same way that Trump is. I'm curious too, because these are leaders of the world's biggest economies, right? They both enjoy what we can call strong man politics. From their previous meetings, James, what do we know about how they usually interact with each other? What is their dynamic like? It seems to be quite good. Trump certainly is always He's very impressed whenever he meets Xi Jinping. He comes away very positive.

That doesn't necessarily translate into policy, but at least interpersonally, they seem to get along. Trump always raves about him. He was in Beijing in May and came away very impressed and said they had a great relationship. China doesn't kind of talk in that language about relations with foreign leaders, so we don't really know what Xi Jinping's kind of opinion of Trump is, but certainly they seem to function on a man-to-man basis. As you mentioned, Trump and Xi's meeting back in May when Trump visited Beijing.

Can you just remind us where they left off after that meeting? How did things stand between the two countries? So pretty good. You know, obviously the context of that May meeting was after a pretty ferocious trade war last year. Both sides matched each other tariff for tariff for several months. It looked like they, you know, almost might completely dick up all the economic relationship. And they stepped back from that. There was a meeting set up.

The idea was to kind of reset the relationship and move forward on a, you know, stronger basis. And arguably the May meeting served that. You know, they both came over very positive. They made a lot of positive noises. But in the months since then, we haven't really seen anything concrete. Certainly things have not got worse, but it's difficult to say that they've got particularly better either. So it sounds like they're just kind of maintaining like a status quo of the relationship here for now? Yeah, absolutely.

And the language that China keeps using as strategic stability. And that seems to be the consensus on both sides, that it doesn't really benefit either side to have a sustained trade war at this point. You know, Trump is busy with real wars and also trade wars with several other countries. China doesn't want any further economic disruption. So if they can keep this relationship on a kind of even keel without necessarily making any progress but without also setting it back, then that's kind of a win for both sides. We're talking Wednesday morning here, James. President Xi is going to, supposed to land later this day and arrive in Washington.

He has been to the U.S. a handful of times. Do we have an indication of how he feels about the U.S. as a country, as opposed to just politics, but as a country? You know, it's always very hard to kind of assess what Xi Jinping feels about anything. You know, Chinese politics is a bit of a black box, especially when it comes to Xi Jinping. But he does have, you know, longstanding ties to the U.S. He first visited as a very young official in the 1980s. He stayed in Iowa. He seems to have longstanding friendships with some of the people he met during then.

They still exchanged letters and mark anniversaries. And then as a top official, he came to the U.S. as a vice president and then obviously several times as president. And so I think he's visited the U.S. more than any other country but Russia. So he does have a lot of experience there. Wow. That's really interesting. You mentioned, you know, his time in Iowa from way back when and he still exchanged letters with the people that he knew there. That is a connection that I wouldn't have expected.

Yeah. And it's, you know, kind of a display of personality that we don't often get from Xi Jinping in particular. And as far as we can tell, you know, reading Chinese state media, it seems to be a genuine relationship that he has with the couple that hosted him and with some other people that he met during his Iowa trip. And he always kind of speaks very positively of that and of that experience. All right, James, let's actually turn to this meeting that that's coming up and the official events that are supposed to begin on Thursday. What is on the agenda for President Xi and President Trump to be discussing here? So there are a number of key items that are on the agenda. Obviously,

trade first and foremost. They'll be looking to maybe build on some agreements from May, maybe strikes from new agreements, though it's unclear just how much progress they'll be on that front. Beyond trade, we think they're going to talk about AI. There's been a lot of messaging this week to suggest that there will be some kind of maybe agreement or maybe just kind of some kind of positive language on a future agreement on AI maybe. And then they'll definitely talk about Taiwan, because this is obviously a key factor in the US-China relationship that will be brought up by the Chinese side. And then Trump is expected also to push China on the war in Iran in some way, though it's unclear exactly what they expect to get out of Beijing on that.

Okay, let's break these down because these are four very interesting, very different points that look like they will be discussed over the meeting here. Trade is a big one, as you said. Of course, the US launched a trade war in much of the world in 2025, including China. China fought back with matching tariffs. Where does the trade relationship between these two countries stand right now, James? It's difficult to say it's not as bad as it was at the height of the trade war. Okay.

But it's, you know, it's not as good as it was in, say, 2018 or even during Trump's first term when he actually launched a trade war then as well. During his first term, he was really pushing for some kind of big comprehensive trade deal. That seems to be off the table now. They are much more constrained in their ambitions when they talk about trade with China. They did agree in May to set up this thing called the US China Board of Trade. Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, he said over the weekend that that apparatus is now operational. Can you give us a sense of what that practically speaking would do here?

It seems to be a kind of, you know, a box where they can talk about kind of the uncontroversial trade issues. So maybe they'll set some policy on agricultural imports and exports, potentially something on Chinese EVs, maybe an aviation purchase. But it's not really expected to get down to the controversial things, such as export controls that both sides have on various items and technology and other kind of issues that really, you kind of threaten the relationship. this will be more about an area for them to talk about the stuff they agree on rather than make progress on the stuff they don't. Okay. So from this meeting then, do we expect any development specifically on trade to come out of this visit? There will be some announcements, I'm sure, because, you know, that's kind of part of the pomp and ceremony of these type of things. You always want to have some kind of win that you can announce.

But when it comes to the kind of macro trade relationship, I don't think we're expecting any, you know, massive change to it, how it has. it currently is. This is an interesting relationship between these two countries because their tensions with trade have also affected other countries in the world, of course, right? With the U.S. putting tariffs on other countries as well, including Canada, they've sometimes actually pushed those countries towards China where we didn't actually have such a strong relationship before because we're looking for other trading partners, right, James? Can you just give us a sense then of how the trade war between the U.S. and China is affecting

other countries here? Yeah, absolutely. And this has probably been the biggest change that Trump has achieved in the relationship is that from his first term when he was very aggressive against China and put in a bunch of tariffs, they were carried on by the Joe Biden administration. And then Biden was actually quite successful in getting a number of allied democracies to also take a harder stance on China. Those countries have now mostly rolled back those stances because the US has taken a hard stance against them. So, you know, China was maybe a little bit more isolated and Trump has talked about trying to isolate China on trade. But at the same time, because he keeps starting these trade wars and imposing tariffs with other

countries, they essentially have to turn to China. You know, it's the second largest economy in the world. And if you're not going to have a good trading relationship with the US, you kind of have to have one with China. And so this trade war, it restrains how much the US can sacrifice its relationship with China because it's busy sacrificing its relationship with a number of other partners at the time. Yeah.

It's interesting because it sounds like the US was trying to isolate China, but throughout these new policies that the administrations are rolling out, they're actually pushing countries towards China. Yes, absolutely. And we've seen that with Canada. You know, Canada had a very, very strange relationship with China for years. And some of that was because we got a new prime minister and it created an opportunity for a reset.

But some of that was also because Ottawa has had to go and look for other partners because the trading relationship with the US is so tense. We'll be right back. Okay, James, so we talked about trade and how the U.S. and China are dealing with this issue. Let's now move to the second issue that you mentioned, which is AI. What do we know about what these countries are going to be discussing when it comes to this? Not very much. There has been a lot of indication both sides have kind of suggested they will talk about AI,

but what exactly that means and what will come out of it is very unclear. Again, Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, he was suggesting over the weekend after talks with some Chinese interlocutors is that there might be some kind of similar body as the Board of Trade for AI, but that's already been slightly rolled back and queried by the Chinese side. So, you know, potentially we might get some avenue where they can talk about AI or even, you know, some people have been talking about setting up some kind of hotline for AI to talk about AI crisis similar to how some countries have nuclear hotlines. But it's very, very woolly at the moment and we don't really know what that's going to mean. When you talk about a hotline, though, like an AI hotline, like a nuclear hotline, like, do we know anything about what this would entail or how that would work? I mean, in theory, it would be an opportunity for leaders to warn each other about AI crises or to, you know, strike some agreement about certain types of AI development, you know, cutting edge development or especially around AI in weapons, you know, biological weapons or nuclear weapons development. But in practice, a lot of experts think this, it's not really comparable to a nuclear hotline because,

With nuclear weapons, that is something that you can monitor from overseas. These are big physical things you can see with satellites you can monitor. And whereas if it's a data center somewhere in the U.S., somewhere in rural China, and it's doing some kind of illicit research, how do you monitor that as the other party? It requires a huge amount of trust to say that you're not doing this or that you've made agreements on this, and there just isn't that level of trust in this relationship. This is interesting, though, because it does signal that both countries are thinking, about the future of artificial intelligence AI and how the development of this might happen.

So I guess it's fair to say that they are very attuned to what the other is doing on this front. They are. And, you know, there are voices within both countries who would like to see, you know, some kind of slowing down of AI development or, you know, pacing the frontier as Anthropic argued for recently. But the governments, you know, they're in this kind of catch money too. Again, a little bit like the nuclear arms race, that if you think that AI is, you know, very, You know, it's the most important thing for you economically or perhaps even militarily, you have to trust the other side when they say they're going to slow down. And like I said, that that trust doesn't exist. There is no way that either of these sides would trust the other one to say we're not going to do this type of development.

And then so it's very hard to see how they reach some kind of agreement on this. So it does sound like maybe there's not a lot of hope that there's actually going to be some cooperation when it comes to AI here. No, I think it's much more likely that we'll get some vague language around concerns about AI safety and being responsible. with development and things like that and not any kind of real agreement. Okay. Let's move on to the third item that you mentioned, James, which is, of course, talk around Taiwan. Taiwan is, of course, a self-ruled island that China claims as its own. And the U.S. has longstanding commitments to aid Taiwan.

Who is going to bring up Taiwan potentially in these discussions? Xi Jinping will bring up Taiwan. China always raises this when they talk to the U.S. to lesser and greater degrees. This is, you know, the most contentious issue within the U.S.-China relationship. It's China always says this is a red line for them, that, you know, certain levels of U.S. support. For Taiwan are, you know, a massive problem for them. There is currently an outstanding $14 billion arms deal from the U.S. to Taiwan that's been held up for several months now. China would love to see that go away, essentially, and never be delivered.

Or if not, go away entirely then to continue to delay it. Would you know why it's been held up? So it was initially it was sent to Trump's desk at the sign kind of ahead of the May meeting. And it's long-standing U.S. policy that they don't do these types of big arms sales around meetings like this because it's so disruptive that it's kind of a mark of respect to not do something so controversial when you're waiting to meet the other leader. Because China wouldn't like it that the U.S. is sending Taiwan weapons, basically. Exactly. And it could potentially derail the meeting. You know, China might cancel the meeting. China actually only officially said that Xi Jinping was going to Washington like on Monday.

So, you know, China kind of holds its cards very close to its chest, and if it needs to cancel a meeting, it will. There is, of course, the potential that once Xi Jinping leaves Washington, Trump could go ahead and sign that and the arms still go ahead. But then, you know, there are more meetings down the line that maybe they won't want to derail and China will try and persuade the U.S. to not do this. We think they'll also, they'll push the U.S. on some language around Taiwan, which is a big Chinese priority. They are very keen to hear the U.S. use certain terms. The US traditionally has said that it does not support Taiwan independence, formal Taiwanese independence. They are, of course, de facto independent. But China would like them to say oppose.

And people might say, well, what's the difference between saying you oppose something and you don't support it? But for China, that's a very important distinction. It would be a win for them, you know, rhetorically certainly. But down the line, does that actually change US policy if Donald Trump says he opposes Taiwanese independence? does that change what the U.S. would do in the instance of an invasion, we don't really know. Has Trump signaled anything about how he would like to position himself and the U.S., I guess, on this issue? He signaled everything and anything on this issue. His policy on Taiwan is incredibly hard to pass. He has a lot of China Hawks in his cabinet and certainly within the wider Republican Party, who are very supportive of Taiwan.

But at the same time, Trump has doubted U.S. commitments and doubted just U.S. US engagement in Asia in general. He's previously made some noise about, you know, what kind of not supporting time on independence and things like that. He may very well say in the meeting, after the meeting, which he opposes it, does that officially change US policy? We don't know. He has suggested that the arms deal was a kind of very good bargaining chip. So some kind of people, especially in Taipei, some people fear that he might trade, you know, cancel the arms deal in exchange for some agreement on trade or on, you know, Iran. or something like that, that really would be a big step and a big change in U.S. policy, far more

than anything rhetorical. But most analysts that I spoke to doubt that the U.S. would take that step just because of what it would say about the alliance and its commitment to other alliances around the world. But it does sound like that Trump is maybe walking a finer line than maybe previous administrations when it comes to this issue. Is there room, I guess, for China to maybe make a move here if the U.S. has seen to potentially be stepping back? Militarily, you mean?

Yeah. It's very unclear because again, you know, you would really be calling the US's bluff on this about whether, because Trump is rhetorically less predictable about Taiwan, does that mean US hard power, you know, won't be used in the instance of an invasion? There's no indication either that China is remotely ready to carry out an invasion in the near term or potentially ever. You know, this would be an incredibly difficult invasion. And, you know, there's a lot of talk about how the US is overstretched because of Iran. But the other lesson that you can take from Iran is that, you know, Iran has shown very well that you cannot predict that a much stronger power can steamroll a weaker one. So I think if you're the People's Liberation Army, you're looking at that war and thinking, you know, Iran's resisted incredibly effectively. Could Taiwan also and the repercussions of that could be huge for China?

That's really interesting that Iran may be serving as an example that China is looking at here. Yeah, Iran and Ukraine. You know, we've had two countries that, you know, in theory everyone thought would be steamrolled by a much. greater power, I think if you look at them, that's potentially a warning lesson for China about the risks of invading Taiwan. Okay, we've mentioned Iran a few times now. Let's talk directly about this issue here and the conversations that maybe the U.S. and China are having around this.

Of course, since earlier this year, the U.S. is at war with Iran. And China is one of Iran's biggest trading partners, James. So what are the dynamics at play here between the U.S., China and Iran? China obviously opposes this war, because they are an important trading partner. of Iran and a long-standing partner of Iran's, you know, and they don't want to see great, you know, even further disruption to the Middle East where they had been trying to build their influence, things like that. At the same time, their policy towards this has been quite hard to pass again. There has been some support for Iran economically, some suggestion of maybe

some military equipment sharing, some of the US has argued that, but it's not very clear. But at the same time, they've also been very critical of Tehran for striking other countries in the Middle East, who are also close Chinese partners. Trump has on multiple occasions suggested that he wants to see China do more on this, that he seems to think that China can maybe use economic or other leverage over Tehran. But it's unclear what that would look like in practice because before the war, yes, China was incredibly important to Iran economically, but the Iranian economy has basically been devastated.

So it's difficult to see what cutting off the remaining relationship with China would do to, you know, Iran's resolve. I don't think that necessarily pushes them over the edge to accept some kind of deal that they don't want to accept already. Whether China would want to use that influence or burn that kind of credibility with other allies is very unclear. They would rather this topic doesn't come up at all really because probably Trump wants them to do something that's impossible and they're in a kind of lose-lose situation on that. Okay, so it sounds like Taiwan is an issue that China wants to raise the U.S. doesn't want to talk about and Iran is an issue that the U.S. wants to raise and China doesn't want to talk about. Yeah, and some people may look at that and say, well, maybe there's a likeful swap somewhere in that. But I think most likely is they both raise these issues and they both go away unhappy with how the other side responded.

Before I let you go here, James, and let's look at the big picture of these meetings because it sounds like, yes, there's going to be some conversations that are happening here, but maybe not a huge amount of things are going to change as a result. Does this kind of meeting between she and Trump, could this actually affect policy or lead to any real change here? Probably not. These meetings are great for maintaining stability. They're great for keeping the relationship in the current status, which is a relatively good one at the moment, considering the last couple of years. But they don't necessarily mean that policy won't change in future. Trump visited Beijing during his first term and had an incredibly successful meeting there. He was, he ate at the Forbidden City, they rolled out the reddest of red carpets for him. He came away, hugely impressed, raved about China, raved about his personal relationship with Xi Jinping.

A couple years later, he launched a trade war with them. So you can have a great meeting. It doesn't necessarily mean that the relationship will stay great in the long term. So it sounds like this meeting is really just kind of in a way, you almost keep up appearances to kind of keep this relationship just at a steady point then. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of positives for doing that. You know, just because you don't make a breakthrough doesn't necessarily mean it's a failure.

It's positive for both sides to have a stable relationship while they sort things out domestically and sort out, you know, how this economic relationship looks in the future. And I think both sides have an incentive to keep this relationship as stable as possible, while they're also gradually moving in the direction of what one analyst describes to me as a slow decoupling. You know, neither side would ever use that term. It's a very kind of controversial term. But, you know, the broad direction of U.S. China relations is away from each other economically. But they don't want any kind of sharp break. They want to shore up their economies, build partnerships with other countries and then prepare for some kind of, you know, much smaller, much, you know, less.

less engaged relationship in future. James, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. That was James Griffiths, the Globe's Asia correspondent. That's it for today. I'm Manika Ramman Wilms. This episode is mixed by Rachel Levy McLaughlin. Our producers are Madeline White,

Cheryl Sutherland, Rachel Levy McLaughlin, and Michal Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive. editor. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you tomorrow.