by Hua Bin, The Unz Review:
Riding on the back of his most recent “success” in the Iran War, Trump is scheduled to visit President Xi on May 13 to 15.
It is interesting to preview who has what “cards” ahead of the meetings and speculate what the “asks” are from each side.
This way, we can have a clear-eyed view who has the leverage, who needs the other more, and what will come out of the summit.
Since Trump’s second term, he has started or continued a range of confrontations aimed at China. These include trade, technology, energy and critical minerals, military manuveurs, financial sanctions, and Taiwan.
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His military adventures in Venezuela and Iran are both explicitly targeted at choke-holding China’s energy supply.
Of course, Trump also wants to “show off” how “mighty” the US military is.
In Trump’s calculation, a direct war with a superpower Russia in Ukraine is dangerous, but a crushing defeat of a second-tier regional power Iran and a third-world weakling Venezuela would serve as solid “muscle flexing” to Beijing.
Even his “spat” with Europe over Greenland is largely driven by a desire to secure critical minerals and rare earth to become less dependent on Chinese supply chains.
One could argue that much of Trump’s foreign policies in the last 16 months have been aimed at maximizing leverage over China – the US grand national strategy to contain China since the “pivot to Asia” in 2011.
So, how did things go? Who has more “cards” when the two heads of state meet in Beijing? Who has more to ask than to bestow? And who will be “bending the knee”?
The “Scorecard”
Let’s start by reviewing where the two countries stand on each of these fronts.
Trade & Economy
Trump announced his April Fool’s Liberation Day tariff war in 2025, most pointedly targeting China.
The result? China’s economy grew by 5% to reach $20 trillion, meeting the target set by Beijing in 2024.
Total export grew by 6.1% to $3.8 trillion while export to the US declined by 20% to $420 billion. Export to the US represented 11% of total, down from 15% in 2024 and 19% in 2019.
In contrast, China’s export to ASEAN and EU was roughly $560 billion each, 30% higher than export to the US.
In 2025, China’s global trade surplus reached $1.2 trillion, a nearly 20% increase from 2024. It was the highest recorded trade surplus in history.
Meanwhile, the US expanded its trade deficit by 2.1% to $1.24 trillion, also a world record.
For the first four months of 2026 (January–April), China’s total exports reached $1.34 trillion, representing a year-on-year growth of 14.5%.
Its exports to the US continued to decline by over 10% in the same period.
The US now accounts for a smaller share (~9%) of China’s export than Iran’s share of China’s oil import (~13%).
