For Trump, Xi, summit will be as much about messages to voters at home as diplomatic one-upmanship

When President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping of China meet in Beijing this week, their separate but mutual agendas will likely touch on issues that reassure their respective domestic audiences as much, if not more, than those designed to showcase any winning brinkmanship. To be sure, Trump said Monday, three days before his first scheduled meeting with the Chinese leader, “I have a great relationship with President Xi. We’re doing a lot of business, but it is smart business.”
His comment came amid a nearly three-month-long war between the U.S. and Iran, which China supports, considering it is Iran’s largest trading partner and buys roughly 90% of its oil exports. 
The war and its disruption of the world’s oil supply has rattled both of the world’s two biggest economic superpowers as well as their respective industries and consumers. 
While each country has enough oil reserves, they won’t last indefinitely. Meanwhile, small independent refineries in China have had to cut oil production. And Americans are paying an average of over $4.50 for a gallon of gasoline at filling stations across the country – roughly $1.50 a gallon more than before the war started. 
Trump and Xi will also meet for the sixth time amid other global tensions, including Russia’s latest conflict with Ukraine, now over four years long; questions about the future of NATO; the status of Taiwan; and the rising influence of artificial intelligence. 
Before departure Tuesday evening for the Thursday-Friday summit, Trump said he would focus on trade, including a push for China to buy more U.S. agricultural products, rare earth exports, and improving the trade imbalance between the countries — all issues with direct political resonance in the U.S.
Analysts also said Trump would seek China’s cooperation in reducing tensions with Iran and stabilizing energy markets. 
“Trump wants a stable relationship with China” and “to be seen as making progress” on trade, said Ryan Hass, a fellow with the Brookings Institute. 
Still, others say Trump may pressure Xi on the case of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong newspaper publisher and pro-democracy leader who has been jailed in China for more than five years. Many U.S. officials have urged China to release Lai.
Xi’s domestic priorities are different. 
China is also struggling with slowing economic growth, uncertainty within its property sector, declining consumer confidence and trade-related pressures connected with U.S. tariffs. According to analysts, Beijing appears eager to project stability in a way that would feed into the domestic narrative that China is a more reliable global actor than the U.S.
“China’s top priority is greater stability in its relationship with the United States, especially greater stability on tariffs,” Edgard D. Kagan said in a report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies released ahead of the summit.
Xi is also likely to try to convince Trump to curb U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island Beijing has said is at the “core of China’s core interests.”

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