Donald Trump’s whirlwind trip to Beijing – the first US presidential visit in nearly a decade – wrapped up with much fanfare but little clarity about what was actually achieved.
Trump said on Friday he and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, “settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to solve”. But he didn’t provide much detail on what those solutions were.
“My guess is that despite all the ceremony and summit theatrics, that at the end of the day, this summit will not be that significant,” said Amanda Hsiao, the China director at the Eurasia Group, an advisory and consultancy business. “The core of the relationship hasn’t changed.”
Donald Trump and Xi Jinping stand in front of an ornate building entrance
Trump leaves China without breakthroughs on Iran, Taiwan or AI
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The Chinese readout of Xi and Trump’s final bilateral on Friday gave little concrete information on what had been achieved by the meetings, which have been called the “stalemate summit”.
In the hours after he departed Beijing, Trump provided more detail in an interview with Fox News about what he had discussed with China’s leader. Here is where things stand on the summit’s core issues.
Iran
The crisis in the Middle East loomed large over the talks. In the run-up to, and during, the summit, Trump and officials from his administration gave mixed messages about how much help they were requesting from the Chinese to push Iran to the negotiating table.
“We did discuss Iran,” Trump said on Friday. “We feel very similar about [how] we want it to end. We don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the straits open.”