Experts analyze what's at stake in the Trump-Xi summit

President Trump personally greeted Chinese President Xi Jinping upon arrival at Joint Base Andrews, an unusually direct reception that preceded a lavish welcome and a state dinner. Speaking with Amna Nawaz on PBS NewsHour, former U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, now at Harvard University, said such a greeting by a sitting president had not happened since 1962, when Kennedy welcomed British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Burns doubted Xi Jinping, whom he called hardheaded, pragmatic and cynical toward the United States, would be swayed by the flattery, and argued Washington was treating an adversary better than allies, noting Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was also visiting without similar honors.

Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University's Institute for America, China and the Future of Global Affairs, said expectations heading into the summit were low, particularly on artificial intelligence, and it had been unclear until recently whether AI would even be discussed. She said productive talks on shared technological risks would require Washington to treat Beijing as a peer rather than seek continued primacy. Burns pointed to an existing U.S.-China communications channel on AI, recalling that President Biden previously secured Xi's public agreement that humans, not AI systems, should control nuclear weapons. He noted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently called such a channel important, but questioned China's reliability in sharing information, citing past difficulties reaching Chinese officials during crises such as the balloon incident and Speaker Pelosi's visit.

Summarized by PolitiKool from PBS NewsHour’s reporting. Read the full story at PBS NewsHour →