The Summit Washington Needs More Than Beijing Does

Trump is heading to Beijing. Xi is set to receive him. And the two sides are preparing to attempt to repair what they spent most of 2025 breaking.

According to PBS News, the summit's primary goal is keeping the economic relationship stable — not producing a sweeping new trade framework. Expect China to announce plans to buy American soybeans, beef, and Boeing airplanes. U.S. officials have also teased the creation of a Board of Trade.

The October truce — which prior coverage tracked — is now expected to be extended. Whether an extension fixes anything structural is less certain. It doesn't.

What the Numbers Actually Look Like Right Now

Here's the current tariff math, according to the Council on Foreign Relations: the Geneva deal struck in May 2025 cut rates by 115 percentage points, bringing the U.S. tariff on Chinese imports down to 30%, and Chinese tariffs on U.S. goods to 10%. Factor in the universal 10% baseline tariff and sectoral add-ons, and the effective U.S. rate on Chinese goods sits around 40%.

For context, per PBS News, before Trump started tariffing China in 2018, the average U.S. tariff on Chinese goods was 3.1%. So we've gone from 3.1% to a peak above 145%, back down to roughly 40%. That's a truce, not a resolution.

The Wikipedia trade war timeline confirms the 2025 peak: the U.S. hit 145% on Chinese goods, China countered with 125% on American goods. Those levels are forecast to cause a 0.2% loss of global merchandise trade.

Chinese Companies Didn't Wait for Permission

While diplomats are still arranging photo ops, Chinese executives are already back on planes to the U.S.

CNBC's Evelyn Cheng, reporting from Suzhou, spoke directly with Zou Ping, co-founder of AI Speech — a company selling AI-powered microphones, speakers, and digital note-taking tablets into U.S. corporate and university markets. Zou said "the worst is over" and confirmed he'd just returned from a U.S. trip. His company is in conversations with New York electronics retailer B&H about possible acquisition or distribution deals.

Guo Renjie, CEO of humanoid robot startup Zeroth, told CNBC he's "talking with Best Buy right now" and plans to launch U.S. and European sales this fall, starting with a toy-sized interactive robot. He said the company received significant orders at January's Consumer Electronics Show.

These are named executives, named retailers, named timelines. The business community is moving faster than the policy community.

What Mainstream Coverage Is Getting Wrong

Many outlets are likely to frame this summit as a win for Trump's tariff strategy — proof that pressure works. That framing overlooks several critical details.

The Council on Foreign Relations' Zongyuan Zoe Liu notes that the 90-day tariff reprieve "completes the Trump administration's walk back of its reciprocal tariff policy" — the centerpiece of the April 2 'Liberation Day' announcement. The administration hiked tariffs to historic levels, watched markets panic, then retreated. It's now calling the retreat a deal.

Meanwhile, the dollar has weakened significantly against the euro and the yen, according to CFR. Foreign investors held an all-time high of $16 trillion in U.S. equities at the end of last year — 18% of the entire stock market. CFR's Liu says those investors "will not be as eager to park their capital in the United States" after watching the dollar slide. That means higher volatility in U.S. bond and stock markets going forward. That cost doesn't show up in a tariff rate.

CFR also flags another consequence drawing insufficient attention: the import surge. With tariffs temporarily lower, U.S. businesses are stockpiling Chinese goods right now. That stockpiling drives up container shipping and freight costs — which feeds inflation. The truce carries real costs.

What Regular Americans Actually Lost During 2025

PBS News pointed to two groups watching this summit closely: American farmers who were shut out of the Chinese soybean market for most of 2025, and U.S. manufacturers who lost access to China's rare earth minerals needed to produce smartphones and fighter jets.

Wilbur Ross, Trump's first-term Commerce Secretary, told PBS: "The idea of somehow China being totally independent of us and us being totally independent of China, I think, is a fiction." That's a blunt concession from someone who served the administration that started this escalation cycle.

In Dongguan, China, Michael Lu — founder and CEO of gift box producer Brothersbox — told PBS: "The U.S. used to be a more stable market." A Chinese manufacturer is calling the U.S. unstable. That's where we are.

What Comes Next

The summit is poised to produce what summits produce: photos, incremental announcements, and a temporarily lower temperature. Tariffs are already down from insane to merely high. Chinese companies are moving aggressively into U.S. retail. American farmers may get their soybean contracts back.

But the structural problems — trade deficit, data security, rare earth dependency, dollar credibility — will remain unresolved. A 90-day truce extended is not a strategy. It's a pause between rounds.

The businesses in Suzhou are hustling. The diplomats heading to Beijing are preparing to photo-op. Only one of those groups is actually building anything.