The visit

Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington wrapped up Friday with limited deliverables. The pageantry was loud, and the substance was quiet.

The Three main takeaways for global markets are:

1. The trade truce was settled before the leaders sat down. The main question, whether to extend the fragile truce from last fall, was resolved before the official meeting. The summit was mostly about optics.

2. The hard issues are still open. The summit showed how little progress there's been on AI, cyber operations, export controls, and digital sovereignty. Taiwan also hung over the talks.

3. Both sides are hedging. The two sides' fact sheets show how wary each is of the other. The numbers also differ by side. China's Commerce Ministry pointed to coal purchases and plans for 2027 and 2028 without giving an amount, while the U.S. readout cited at least 10 million metric tons a year.

The bigger signal is the calendar. The two leaders are set to meet twice more this year, in November at APEC in China and again in December. Stability, not breakthroughs, looks like the shared goal.

Trump strategy seems to be to get acquainted with Xi, with regular talking and meetings, and through a personal relationship, being able to manage the big problems in the world: the two wars, AI, the oil glut, etc. But Xi is not in a hurry. He knows he’ll be there when the next president comes in 2028. Perhaps that’s why little to no compromise on pretty much anything was achieved last week.

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