BEIJING/WASHINGTON, March 9 (Reuters) – A summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping this month is unlikely to create room for even a limited reset of business and investment ties, five people briefed on preparations said.
American business leaders at this stage have not secured the CEO delegation some had sought. On the other side, there is no indication Beijing is on track for the investment protections it has sought on behalf of Chinese companies.
Washington and Beijing are looking to maintain the stability that has characterised relations between the world’s two largest economies since late last year after a bruising period marked by Trump’s tariffs and China’s chokehold on rare earths exports.
But some U.S. companies had also held out hope Trump’s visit could go further than a green light for the deals on Chinese purchases of soybeans and Boeing aircraft, already under consideration.
‘EVER-SHRINKING STATE VISIT’
Overshadowing the summit – the first Trump-Xi meeting since they agreed on the trade truce in October – has been Chinese frustration with the Trump administration’s last-minute planning for an event that normally takes months of painstaking preparations, three people with knowledge of the arrangements told Reuters.
Uncertainties, besides clearance for Chinese investment, include the thorny issue of Trump’s tariffs and whether he will be joined by the kind of high-profile business delegation that the leaders of Canada, Britain and Germany recently brought to China on their state visits.
“This feels like an ever-shrinking state visit. The ambition for what this trip will accomplish seems to be getting smaller by the day,” said Ryan Hass, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution.
The White House, Treasury Department, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and China’s commerce and foreign ministries did not respond to requests for comment on prospects for the summit.
Trump is to visit China from March 31 to April 2, a U.S. official told Reuters last month. China has not confirmed the trip, but its top diplomat said on Sunday the agenda for the exchange was “on the table”.
“What is required is for both sides to make thorough preparations to create a conducive environment to manage existing differences,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a press conference on the sidelines of an annual parliament meeting in Beijing.
Washington only began working-level interagency planning meetings for the trip recently, leaving little time for a state visit that Beijing expects to be highly choreographed, two sources said.
U.S. officials view the visit as one of four potential Trump-Xi summits this year. A meeting in Paris this week between Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng will focus on possible deliverables for the Beijing meeting, a person with knowledge of the evolving preparations said.
Trump’s ambassador to Beijing, David Perdue, is pushing for a CEO delegation, and U.S. officials in China have made tentative outreach to companies, two sources said.
But USTR, which has been driving Washington’s summit agenda with Treasury, has been reluctant to bring CEOs, three sources said, to keep the focus on “managed trade”.
TARIFFS LOOM, BUT SUMMIT NOT ‘A FIGHT ABOUT TRADE’
The Trump team could still scramble a last-minute CEO delegation, three sources said. The China Development Forum, to which dozens of top American executives flock annually, will take place a week before the summit.
To secure Chinese investment in the U.S., Beijing wants security guarantees, two sources said, after the forced divestiture of TikTok in the U.S.
Trump invited Chinese automakers to build factories in the U.S. in January, but a U.S. official said the president has not pushed for an all-out effort to secure investment commitments from China, as he did with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Some Republican lawmakers have warned Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that Washington should not lower guardrails against Chinese investment.
Tariffs remain a potential flashpoint.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month invalidated a 10% fentanyl-related tariff Trump had imposed on China and others under an emergency statute. The Trump administration has told Beijing it expects to reimpose that levy under a different law, a U.S. official said.
But the purpose of the summit is “not to fight about trade,” Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told ABC News last month.
“It’s to maintain stability, make sure that the Chinese are holding up their end of our deal and buying American agricultural products and Boeings and other things, and making sure they are sending us the rare earths that we need,” Greer said.
A potential win from the summit could be an agreement for China to purchase some 500 narrow-body jets from Boeing. Trump last year threatened export controls on Boeing parts, a pain point for China.
Beijing is seeking U.S. concessions for the purchase, including multi-year parts guarantees, said two sources briefed on the negotiations. The deliveries would likely not be completed until the 2030s because of Boeing’s production pace and order backlog.
White House officials could still opt to push the Boeing deal back to minimise the need to make concessions to Beijing and reserve some deals to announce for a future summit on U.S. soil, one person with knowledge of the discussions said.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen in Beijing and Michael Martina in Washington; Editing by Kevin Krolicki and William Mallard)
