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he highly anticipated meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump was finally held in Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city, the venue for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum’s annual summit.
Trump’s five-day Asia tour had started off in Malaysia. It then took him to Japan before the final stop in South Korea. It was there that he met President Xi, a “great leader of a great country.” For Xi, his sixth meeting with President Trump was a “great pleasure.”
According to AFP, the two leaders agreed to de-escalate the trade war that has roiled global markets, with Washington reducing some tariffs and Beijing committing to maintain supplies of critical rare earth metals.
“I thought it was an amazing meeting,” Trump said after the talks, mentioning that he would visit China in April, and that Xi would visit the US later next year.
Xi said the two leaders had reached an “important consensus” to resolve tensions between the world’s two top economies.
The News on Sunday spoke to Dr Christopher McKnight Nichols, a professor of history and Wayne Woodrow Hayes chair in National Security Studies at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at the Ohio State University.
“President Trump’s newfound focus on Asia and personal diplomatic exchanges and meetings with leaders in Japan, South Korea and China mark a significant shift for him, as overall tariff policy and regional issues related to Europe, Russia and Ukraine, as well as Israel, had been major areas of emphasis in the first term and early in his second term,” Dr Nichols said.
Will the Trump-Xi meeting stand out as one of the key points marking a quiet acceptance of a post-American world order? Dr Nichols doesn’t think that will be the case. “I don’t think that the Trump-Xi meeting represented an acceptance of a post-American world order. If anything, Donald Trump certainly believes the US is the world’s preeminent power, even if he disavows American world leadership explicitly,” he said.
Dr Nichols made a comparison with a late 19th Century situation. “With the US in the position of the British Empire; when nations like the US were rising powers, like China today, very likely to overtake that world leader, but also with other rising rival nations also on the ascent, it was Germany then and it is countries like India today, as well.
“In this case, we see a major similarity to the emerging multipolarity of the world system today. It can take many decades to determine when a hegemony has most fully relinquished that position and dropped back into a place of major but not preeminent power status.
“One might interpret this Asia tour as emblematic of the enduring tensions in Trumpian foreign policy, shifting between unilateralist modes of engagement and outright ‘America First’ retrenchment.”
After the meeting, Trump mentioned that the deal they had reached included China immediately buying “tremendous amounts of soybeans and other farm products,” a key issue for Trump’s support and a point of leverage for Beijing.
About global perceptions of President Trump’s tour of Asia, Dr Nichols said, “We are seeing a series of bilateral high-level meetings. There are no serious attempts at multilateralism. Many of Trump’s statements at the meetings and to the press have suggested an inward-US focus, notably on domestic politics, rather than a primary emphasis on international relations - Asia in particular.”
Asked whether he viewed Trump’s rhetoric and strategy in Asia as a continuation of earlier American attempts to balance China’s rise or a break from the post-Cold War order, he said, “I view President Trump’s rhetoric and his administration’s broad strategy in Asia as largely a break from the recent Obama and Biden Asia ‘pivot’ strategies that aimed to balance China’s rise while minimising costs and overall antagonism. At the core, very little of the Trump administration’s Asia polices are about alliance diplomacy and multilateral commitments in either commercial or military domains. Instead, they are transactional and generally unilateral.” Dr Nichols said some of Trumps initiatives, including the imposition of very high tariffs, had already backfired.
He said the Trumpian foreign policy “represents at least a break and at most a significant deviation from late Cold War and post-Cold War US-Asia diplomacy that aimed for a major US leadership role in an interdependent region enmeshed in the global economy, holding China’s predominance at bay through the varied mechanisms of international and regional institutions to reinforce trade, security, human rights and more.”
Dr Nichols said one of the things that stood out to him was the “absence of any mention of Taiwan. The question this omission prompts for us is whether it was strategic or accidental, and to what extent it holds important symbolism.” He said that Trump was actively uninterested in security pledges to other nations, like Taiwan. “Trump does not want to make the issue of Taiwan a sticking point in negotiations that he is most invested in, such as tariffs and trade, access to rare earths and minimising direct US-China conflict in places like the South China Sea.”
After the meeting, Trump mentioned that the deal they had reached included China immediately buying “tremendous amounts of soybeans and other farm products,” a key issue for Trump’s support among US farmers and a point of leverage for Beijing.
Xi agreed to suspend rare earth export restrictions as part of a comprehensive one-year trade deal agreed between the US and Chinese leaders during their summit in South Korea.
“I guess, on the scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One after the meeting.
“We do not always see eye-to-eye with each other. It is normal for the two leading economies of the world to have frictions now and then,” Xi said to Trump in the preliminary remarks.
President Xi also remarked that “In the face of winds, waves, and challenges, you and I, at the helm of relations, should stay the right course and ensure the steady sailing forward of the giant ship of China-US relations.”
Was Busan a managed pause or a recalibration? Dr Nichols says, “I find it very telling that President Xi remarked that both nations should “navigate through winds and waves” together. Not only does this comment reflect his political poise, but it is also indicative of his view that this moment is one of recalibration in the light of the Trump administration’s rather erratic policies, but also suggestive that the two nations can find common ground.” The two leaders have reached a deal for now. Let us see what happens next.
The writer, a communications professional at IBA Karachi, holds a master’s degree in international relations. She can be reached on X: mariaamkahn