Stung By Iran War, Trump Heads To China In Need Of Wins

BEIJING, May 12 (Reuters) – A year ago, U.S. President Donald Trump predicted that rising trade tariffs would rein in America’s main economic rival.

Political analysts say he traveled to China this week with ambition blunted by court rulings, narrowing his targets to a handful of deals on beans, beef and Boeing jets, and seeking Chinese help to resolve the unpopular Iran war.

The modest expectations for Trump’s meetings with Xi Jinping on May 14-15 – his first since the bruising trade war was halted in October – show how Trump’s bombastic approach has failed to gain leverage ahead of negotiations, analysts say.

“Trump needs China more than China needs him,” said Alejandro Reyes, a professor at the University of Hong Kong who specializes in Chinese foreign policy.

“He needs some kind of foreign policy victory: a victory that shows that he wants to ensure stability in the world and not just disrupt global politics,” Reyes added.

China has quietly sharpened its tools of economic pressure on Washington since their last brief meeting at an air base in South Korea, where Trump suspended triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods and Xi backed away from choking global rare earth supplies.

Trump, meanwhile, is busy dealing with U.S. court rulings against tariffs and a war with Iran ahead of November’s midterm elections, which is hurting his approval ratings.

This week’s meeting in China’s capital will be a bigger event, with leaders holding a summit at the Great Hall of the People, touring the UNESCO heritage Temple of Heaven, dining at a state banquet and having tea and lunch together.

But expected economic outcomes consist of a handful of agreements and mechanisms to govern future trade, and it remains unclear whether leaders will even agree to extend the trade truce, officials involved in the planning said.

Trump will be joined by CEOs including Tesla’s Elon Musk and Apple’s Tim Cook, but the business delegation is smaller than when he last visited Beijing in 2017.

Trump said he would discuss trade, as well as arms sales to Taiwan and the situation of jailed media mogul Jimmy Lai, with Xi on Monday. Families of two Americans who have been detained in China for more than a decade are also calling on Trump to release them.

“We benefited for years with our previous presidents, and now we’re in great shape with China,” Trump said. “I respect him (Xi) very much and I hope he respects me too.”

The mood music has changed dramatically since Trump announced in an April 2025 Truth Social post that tariffs would make China realize its “days of robbing” the United States were over.

These duties prompted Beijing to restrict rare earth exports, brutally exposing the West’s dependence on elements vital to the production of everything from electric cars to weapons and eventually leading to a fragile truce between Trump and Xi.

Since then, Trump has faced countless other battles: capturing the leader of Venezuela, threatening to annex NATO member Greenland, and waging a war against Iran that has thrown the Middle East into chaos and fueled a global energy crisis.

More than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the Iran war, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted last month.

Now Trump wants China to persuade Tehran to make a deal with Washington to end the conflict. China maintains ties with Iran and remains a major consumer of Iran’s oil exports.

Matt Pottinger, who served as deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term, told a forum in Taipei last week that China wants to see an outcome that weakens American power but is not immune from the economic cost of a protracted conflict.

But Beijing will want something in return, and at the top of Xi’s agenda will be Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by China.

While some fear a bargain that would embolden China to seize Taiwan by force, even a subtle change in Washington’s wording would raise concerns about the commitment of Taipei’s most important backer that would spill over to other US allies in Asia.

Wu Xinbo, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai who serves on the policy advisory board of China’s foreign ministry, said Trump should make clear that he “will not support independence or take actions that promote a separatist political agenda.”

China also wants the Trump administration to commit to not taking retaliatory trade actions in the future, such as technology export controls, and to roll back existing controls on chipmaking equipment and advanced memory chips, people familiar with the talks said.

And since last October, Beijing has been expanding its own economic leverage, such as passing laws to punish foreign entities that shift supply chains away from China and tightening its rare earth licensing regime.

A majority of Americans (53 percent) say the United States should pursue friendly cooperation and relations with China by 2024, up from 40 percent in 2024, according to a poll released in October by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Therefore, even keeping relations balanced and extending the ceasefire in the trade war may be enough for Trump to claim victory.

The main outcome would likely be “a superficial ceasefire that would be largely to China’s advantage,” said Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

(Reporting by Mei Mei Chu, Antoni Slodkowski and Trevor Hunnicutt in Beijing; Additional reporting by Laurie Chen in Beijing and Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Stephen Coates)