(A)Political - May 16th

Good morning everyone,

It’s been an eventful week in D.C. and beyond. Let’s get into it!

Trump and Xi strike multiple small deals while Trump visited Beijing. CIA Director Ratcliffe visited Havana to extend an olive branch to the Cuban government, but that aid comes with strings attached. U.S. Senators voted to withhold their pay during future government shutdowns.

• Trump-Xi Strike Up Quiet Wins In Beijing

• CIA Director Visits Havana To Offer Aid (With Strings Attached)

• Senators Vote To Withhold Pay During Gov. Shutdowns

Trump-Xi Strike Up Quiet Wins In Beijing

_{By: Atlas}

President Donald Trump flew back to Washington on Friday after a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping that produced a handful of trade commitments, a new dialogue framework, and almost no concrete movement on the issues that have defined the relationship between the world's two largest economies.

The trip — Trump's first to China since 2017 — featured a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, a tour of the Temple of Heaven, a state banquet, and a Friday visit to the Zhongnanhai Garden compound. Unlike the 2017 visit, the two sides did not release a joint public statement, an agreed summary of the meetings, or a fact sheet listing deliverables.

"Hopefully our relationship with China will be stronger and better than ever before!" Trump wrote on Truth Social after taking off. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning, in her own post on X, called the visit "a new beginning."

The two leaders agreed to meet again three more times this year: a state visit in Washington, the G20 summit, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

A Boeing Order and Two New Boards

The most tangible commercial outcome was a Chinese commitment to buy 200 Boeing aircraft. Trump said on Air Force One that the order could grow to 750 planes — paired with 450 General Electric engines — if the first tranche goes well.

The two governments also agreed to establish a "Board of Trade" and a "Board of Investment" to manage bilateral purchases and provide a standing channel for handling disputes. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said officials on both sides were still working out the details, and roughly $30 billion in non-sensitive goods has been identified for the initial scope.

Trump said additional deals were in place for "billions of dollars" of soybeans and other farm goods. No precise figures were released, and U.S. soybean futures fell to their lowest level in more than two weeks on Friday after the summit closed without specific contracts.

The current trade truce, struck at the Busan summit last October, was not extended. It is due to expire later this year. Trump told reporters that the two leaders did not discuss a reduction in tariffs.

Several harder items moved little. There was no announced easing of Chinese export controls on rare-earth minerals and no major summit-level agreement on advanced semiconductor sales, even with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang in the delegation. Apple's Tim Cook, Tesla's Elon Musk, Boeing's Kelly Ortberg and roughly a dozen other corporate executives accompanied Trump.

Taiwan Dominated the Talks

Xi opened the summit with a pointed warning on Taiwan. Mishandling the issue, he told Trump, could push the relationship into a "dangerous place," and the two countries "will have clashes and even conflicts" if it is not handled "properly." A Chinese readout called Taiwan "the most important issue in China-U.S. relations."

Trump said nothing about Taiwan publicly during the trip. On Air Force One on the return flight, he confirmed that Xi had directly asked him whether the United States would defend the island in the event of a Chinese attack. "I said I don't talk about that," Trump told reporters. The response is consistent with Washington's longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity.

Trump also signaled he was rethinking a major arms sale to Taipei. The administration authorized an $11 billion weapons package in December, and lawmakers approved a separate $14 billion package in January that cannot proceed until Trump formally sends it to Congress. "I may do it, I may not do it," he said.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump went further, urging both sides to lower the temperature. "Taiwan would be very smart to cool it a little bit. China would be very smart to cool it a little bit. They ought to both cool it," he said. "The last thing we need right now is a war that's 9,500 miles away."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said separately that U.S. policy on Taiwan remained unchanged. Chinese state media made no mention of Trump's Taiwan comments.

Iran Left Ambiguous

The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has dominated Washington's foreign policy since late February, and Trump went into Beijing seeking Chinese help to wind it down. He left with broad words and little in writing.

"We feel very similar," Trump said as he met with Xi on Friday. "We want that to end. We don't want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the straits open." Xi said nothing publicly on the topic.

A separate statement from China's foreign ministry said the conflict "should never have happened, has no reason to continue" and offered to help the parties find peace, but stopped short of any concrete commitment.

Trump told reporters that Xi privately offered to help find an end to the war and promised not to supply military equipment to Tehran. The Chinese side has not confirmed either point. Trump also said Xi expressed interest in buying U.S. oil, which would reduce Beijing's reliance on Iranian crude.

He suggested he was considering lifting sanctions on Chinese refineries that have continued to buy Iranian oil — a step that would roll back one of the few concrete penalties Washington has imposed on Beijing over the war.

A New "Strategic Stability" Framework

Beijing left the summit with a narrative win. Chinese officials announced that the two leaders had agreed to a vision of "a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability," intended to shape ties through the rest of Trump's term and built around cooperation, bounded competition, and managed differences.

"We must make it work and never mess it up," Xi told Trump.

Trump did not push back publicly on the framing. He raised the case of imprisoned Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai, 78, who was sentenced earlier this year to 20 years under the national security law. "I did bring it up. It's a tougher one," Trump said. There was no result.

Beijing's terms were on display in the choreography as well. Xi promised to send rose seeds to plant at the White House and recalled the hospitality Trump showed him at Mar-a-Lago in 2017. Trump, for his part, stayed unusually on script, reading a prepared toast at the state banquet and avoiding off-the-cuff remarks for most of the two days.

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