Analysts warn of low expectations as Trump-Xi summit nears in Beijing

Donald Trump arrives in Beijing this month promising to push China to open up to American firms, but analysts and former trade officials say the upcoming summit with Xi Jinping is far more likely to stabilise tensions than to deliver a breakthrough. The visit, scheduled around the APEC calendar, comes after a year in which both sides have escalated tariffs, tightened export controls and quietly diverted supply chains.

The headline ask from the US side is broader market access for American companies, particularly in services, agriculture and advanced manufacturing. Beijing, in turn, wants Washington to walk back semiconductor export curbs and lift restrictions on Chinese firms placed on the Commerce Department's entity list. Neither demand is easy to grant without political cost at home.

What is more realistic, observers say, is an extension of the one-year tariff truce agreed in 2025 and a fresh round of large but largely symbolic agricultural purchases — soybeans, corn, sorghum — that allow each leader to claim a win. The White House has floated a multi-year commitment of at least seventeen billion dollars in annual farm sales, though the figures and timelines are still being negotiated through back channels.

The underlying picture is bleak for trade hawks who hoped tariffs would force a major rebalancing. US imports from China have fallen more than 25 percent year-on-year in some categories, but US exports to China have dropped by roughly the same amount, leaving the deficit largely unchanged while squeezing American farmers and exporters. One think-tank estimate suggests US exports to China would have been close to 60 percent higher in 2025 without the trade war.

Behind the optics, both governments understand the limits of what a summit can deliver. The structural disagreements — over subsidies, state-owned enterprises, technology transfer and Taiwan — are not going to be solved in a half-day meeting. The realistic measure of success is whether the two leaders can keep tensions from spilling further into financial markets and into the global semiconductor supply chain.