It was the kind of last-minute reshuffle that tells you what a presidential trip is actually about. Trump arrived in Beijing on May 13 with seventeen CEOs and one quiet line said to reporters two days earlier: “President Xi would like us not to [sell arms to Taiwan], and I'll have that discussion.” Trade deals, rare earths, AI chips, an active war with Iran — and a Taiwan question that broke forty years of US precedent before the plane had cleared US airspace.
The summit's commercial foundation was poured four months before Air Force One touched down at Beijing Capital. At the October 2025 Busan APEC meeting, the US and China executed a framework that walked back the most extreme tariff escalation: US tariffs on Chinese goods fell from an average 57% to 47%; the 20% punitive fentanyl tariff dropped to 10%; and both sides agreed to suspend retaliatory escalation for one year. China resumed soybean imports immediately. The US Trade Representative described it as the first joint trade statement in many years.
Forty-eight hours before Air Force One left for Beijing, Trump called Jensen Huang and told him to be on the plane. NVIDIA's CEO flew to the Alaska refueling stop and boarded there. Pete Hegseth was already on board — the first US defense secretary to fly into China with a sitting president since the Nixon era.
What this created was a 12-month window — a political clock ticking toward autumn 2026 when the truce would need either ratification or renewal. The May Beijing summit is, structurally, the negotiation over what replaces the Busan truce. That context explains why Trump arrived carrying commercial bait (jets, soybeans) and why China held structural leverage (rare earths, chip market access).
In the November 2025 deal, China issued general licenses for the export of five critical-mineral categories to US end-users: rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony, and graphite. The controls being lifted dated to China's retaliation for US semiconductor export restrictions since late 2023. The license ran through November 2026 — creating another deliberate expiration point Beijing can use as future leverage.
In January 2026, ByteDance finalized a joint-venture restructure that gave American and global investors 80.1% of TikTok's US-facing operations. Oracle (15%), Silver Lake (15%), and Abu Dhabi sovereign fund MGX (15%) became the three managing investors. ByteDance retained 19.9%. Trump publicly thanked Xi for “approving the deal.”
The Deals: What Was on the Table and What Had Already Been Signed
This was the most commercially significant pre-summit deliverable. TikTok's 200 million US users represented a geopolitical hostage that China chose to release in exchange for goodwill ahead of the Beijing meeting — and for terms that kept ByteDance meaningful minority control over its most valuable international asset. The deal structure is still being scrutinized by US national security lawyers; a complete data-flow and algorithmic control audit has not been publicly released.
The headline commercial deal widely anticipated by both delegations: China committing to purchase up to 500 Boeing 737 MAX jets, plus potential wide-body additions. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg traveled on Air Force One. If signed at list price, 500 737 MAX units would be valued at approximately $54–60 billion at catalog rates (though Chinese bulk deals routinely price at 40–50% discount, implying a real value closer to $25–35 billion).
China had effectively frozen Boeing orders since 2020 following the 737 MAX crashes, the trade war, and the pandemic. Chinese carriers instead ordered Airbus narrowbodies and accelerated domestic orders of the COMAC C919. A resumption of Boeing purchases would represent a reversal of that pivot — but Chinese airlines would need to reconcile the decision with state orders favoring domestic manufacturers. The Semafor summary of Senate pre-trip briefings: “Boeing, beef, and beans.”
The Taiwan Subtext: What Was Said, Not Said, and Signaled
Caution: Trump's November 2025 deal commitments already included Chinese soybean purchases; the May 2026 summit may be re-announcing structured purchases as new wins. Independently verifiable execution data will take months to surface.
The most consequential technology deal of the summit was announced in fragments. China approved its first major batch of Nvidia H200 chip imports, clearing ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent to purchase more than 400,000 units in total. The H200 — a next-generation AI training chip — had been authorized for China by the Trump administration in late 2025, but not a single unit had been sold due to bilateral disagreements over terms. Jensen Huang's last-minute Air Force One seat was widely interpreted as a signal that a chip deal was imminent.
The H200 deal is the most structurally significant outcome of the trip for the semiconductor industry. Nvidia shares rose 2.3% on Huang's inclusion in the delegation; Micron gained 4.8%; Qualcomm 1.4%. The market's read: relaxed export controls were part of the Beijing package. Source: Yahoo Finance / Nvidia H200 deal, Bloomberg markets.
Why China Has the Upper Hand: A Structural Read
Per the November 2025 agreement, China had already committed to 25 million metric tons of US soybeans annually through 2028. The May summit is expected to supplement this with additional purchase commitments on beef and poultry — categories absent from the November deal. Senator Steve Daines summarized the expected package as “Boeing, beef, and beans.” The symbolic political value to Trump's rural base (Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota) was a stated objective of the US delegation.
No issue at the summit carries more long-term strategic weight than Taiwan, and no issue was more carefully managed through ambiguity by both sides.
When Trump told reporters on May 11 “I'm going to have that discussion with President Xi” regarding Taiwan arms sales, he was acknowledging something that no American president since Reagan had publicly conceded: that Beijing's preferences regarding Taiwan's arms procurement would be an agenda item in bilateral talks. The Six Assurances, issued by the Reagan administration in 1982, specifically prohibit the US government from consulting with the PRC on arms sales to Taiwan. Trump's statement — “President Xi would like us not to, and I'll have that discussion” — did not technically commit to a policy change, but it signaled willingness to treat the Assurance as negotiable. Taiwan's Foreign Ministry declined to comment.