Trump, Xi Meet as Iran War Undercuts Expectations

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President Trump's return to Beijing was supposed to be a victory lap; instead, he's arriving mired in a standoff with Iran and facing a Chinese leader with troubles of his own, the New York Times reports. Trump had delayed this visit six weeks, expecting to s…

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President Trump's return to Beijing was supposed to be a victory lap; instead, he's arriving mired in a standoff with Iran and facing a Chinese leader with troubles of his own, the New York Times reports. Trump had delayed this visit six weeks, expecting to show up with Iran's nuclear program dismantled and the Strait of Hormuz—a key route for Chinese oil and gas—reopened after a bombing campaign last June. None of that has happened. Iran's stockpile is unchanged, the waterway is still shut, and European leaders are openly describing Trump as weakened by a conflict he initiated without a clear endgame. Xi Jinping, meanwhile, has watched a vital energy lifeline close and has done little in public to help Tehran or restore flows that fuel China's economy.

The result: a summit of sharply reduced expectations between two powers that wanted to project control but instead look constrained. The pageantry will still be present, and Trump is bringing a heavyweight business delegation—including Elon Musk, Apple's Tim Cook, and executives from Citi, BlackRock, Blackstone, Boeing, and Goldman Sachs—but the big-picture agenda has shriveled. With the Iran war consuming bandwidth in Washington, the White House has done little groundwork beyond trade, handing lead negotiating duties to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent rather than Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio, an arrangement former officials say would have been unthinkable in earlier eras. The AP reports Trump is hoping for a "win" on deals that will see China buying more food and aircraft from the US.

On substance, both sides are signaling they'll largely sidestep the thorniest problems. Beijing has rebuffed US efforts to fold China into a new nuclear arms treaty even as its arsenal grows rapidly. Cyberattacks and a fast-moving artificial intelligence race are intensifying mutual suspicion, with US officials alarmed by systems like Anthropic's unreleased "Mythos" model that could supercharge hacking—and bracing for a Chinese counterpart. Taiwan remains a flash point, with Beijing pressing Trump to shift from merely "not supporting" independence to explicitly "opposing" it, a change Washington says is unlikely on paper but could be muddied by Trump's off-the-cuff style. Parallel efforts to unwind critical supply-chain dependence on one another are also unlikely to be discussed, sources believe. CBS News runs down more on the biggest potential topics.

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