From ‘cheats’ to ‘great friendship’: How Trump’s rhetoric on China changed

President Donald Trump gave Chinese President Xi Jinping an elaborate welcome in Washington this week, meeting him on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews, a greeting no US president has extended a foreign leader since John F Kennedy welcomed UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1962. The visit, Xi's first trip to Washington in over a decade, produced little beyond a two-month extension of a fragile trade war truce, yet it was accompanied by extensive ceremony and praise for Xi and his wife, according to Al Jazeera.

The friendliness marks a sharp turn from years of Trump attacking Beijing. He has previously accused China of cheating, lying and stealing, called it America's enemy in his book Crippled America, and told an Indiana rally that China was committing "the greatest theft in the history of the world." At a Labor Day news conference he said no country had "ripped us off" like China. More recently, discussing the trade war, he said he did not blame Xi, calling him someone he likes.

Despite the truce, tensions persist over artificial intelligence, rare-earth metals, Taiwan and the Iran war. Trump's tariff campaign has not shrunk the US trade gap with China: Census Bureau figures show the combined goods deficit rose from about $277bn in May-July 2025 to $325bn in the same months of 2026, while Beijing's exports and surplus have grown. Einar Tangen, based in Beijing, described Washington as gambling economically while carrying $40 trillion in debt, warning that renewed tariffs would strain an already stretched federal budget.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Al Jazeera’s reporting. Read the full story at Al Jazeera →