President Donald Trump arrived in Beijing for a high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a moment when both Washington and Beijing are trying to stabilize one of the world’s most consequential rivalries without giving ground on deeper strategic disputes.

The two-day visit marks Trump’s first trip to China since 2017 and comes amid mounting tensions over trade, artificial intelligence, Taiwan and the fallout from the war with Iran. While the White House is framing the summit as an opportunity for new economic agreements and “rebalancing” the U.S.–China relationship, analysts say Beijing’s priorities are far broader and more long-term.

“Trump arrives seeking headline deals and visible momentum ahead of the midterms,” wrote Zongyuan Zoe Liu, senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Xi is playing a longer game, focused on strategic patience rather than substantive compromise.”

TRUMP HEADS TO BEIJING FOR HIGH-STAKES XI TALKS AS TAIWAN TENSIONS, TRADE DISPUTES TEST US STRENGTH

President Donald Trump is expected to press Chinese President Xi Jinping on China’s economic and strategic support for both Iran and Russia, including oil revenue, dual-use components and potential weapons transfers, according to senior administration officials. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Topics expected to be discussed during the summit include trade, aerospace, agriculture and energy agreements, and the creation of a U.S.–China Board of Trade and Board of Investment, according to the White House. 

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Trump’s goal is to “deliver more good deals on behalf of our country” while safeguarding U.S. national security.

Trump participated in a welcome ceremony and bilateral meeting with Xi Thursday morning local time in Beijing, followed by a tour of the Temple of Heaven alongside the Chinese leader and a state banquet later. 

Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said Beijing views the summit as an opportunity to stabilize ties between the world’s two largest economies. 

“Heads-of-state diplomacy plays an irreplaceable role in providing strategic guidance for China–U.S. relations,” Liu said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “We welcome President Trump’s state visit to China. China stands ready to work with the U.S. to expand cooperation and manage differences in the spirit of equality, respect and mutual benefit, and provide more stability and certainty for a transforming and volatile world.”

For Xi, analysts say, the top priority likely is avoiding further escalation with Washington while buying time for China’s slowing economy, as it continues to struggle with weak domestic demand, deflationary pressure and industrial overcapacity. 

A recent report by the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission warned that Beijing is doubling down on state-led industrial policy despite mounting structural weaknesses in the Chinese economy.

The commission said China is increasingly operating a “two-speed” economy, where much of the broader economy stagnates while sectors prioritized by the Chinese Communist Party receive massive state support and continue expanding beyond market demand.

The report also warned of a new “China Shock 2.0,” arguing Beijing’s excess industrial capacity and record trade surplus are disrupting global markets while increasing foreign dependence on Chinese-controlled supply chains in sectors ranging from batteries and pharmaceuticals to semiconductors and artificial intelligence.

“Chinese policy seeks simultaneously to reduce China’s reliance on foreign technology while increasing the world’s dependence on China,” the commission noted in its findings.

TRUMP TO CONFRONT XI AT HIGH-STAKES SUMMIT OVER CHINA BACKING FOR IRAN, RUSSIA

President Trump was greeted by a formal state welcome when he touched down in Beijing ahead of high-stakes talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

At the same time, Xi is entering the talks with leverage stemming from the ongoing Iran crisis and global energy disruptions.

Trump has faced growing domestic pressure over rising energy prices tied to instability in the Middle East and shipping threats near the Strait of Hormuz. Beijing, meanwhile, remains one of Iran’s largest oil customers and maintains political ties with Tehran.

Susan Thornton, former acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs during Trump’s first term, said during a recent Stanford University Asia-Pacific Research Center interview that expectations for major breakthroughs should remain low despite the summit’s symbolism.

“The primary value lies in the act of meeting itself,” Thornton said.

She suggested Beijing may see a strategic advantage in America’s renewed focus on the Middle East. While China has made nominal peace proposals, it has not stepped up as a mediator.

“It seems like they are kind of hanging back and waiting to see what will happen,” Thornton said, arguing that from Beijing’s perspective, a U.S. entanglement in the Middle East may serve as a useful distraction, diverting Washington’s attention and pressure away from China.

One area where the two sides could announce tangible progress is agriculture. 

The White House is pushing Beijing for expanded purchases of U.S. farm products ahead of the summit, according to a Reuters report published Tuesday, particularly soybeans and grains. 

But traders and analysts told Reuters that China’s appetite for major new soybean commitments may be limited due to weak domestic demand and cheaper alternatives from Brazil. Instead, markets are watching for potential agreements involving corn, sorghum, wheat, beef and poultry, sectors viewed as less politically contentious in the broader U.S.–China relationship. 

More than a dozen U.S. business executives, including leaders from agricultural giant Cargill, are accompanying Trump during the visit.

PRESIDENT TRUMP MUST PUT AMERICAN HOSTAGES FIRST IN HIGH-STAKES BEIJING SUMMIT

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan welcome U.S. President Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump at the Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City, in Beijing, Nov. 8, 2017.  (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi via Getty Images)

Despite the focus on trade and geopolitical tensions, survivors of China’s religious persecution are urging the administration not to sideline Beijing’s crackdown on religious groups and dissidents.

Ahead of the summit, Trump publicly pledged to raise the case of imprisoned Chinese pastor Ezra Jin following advocacy efforts by his daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, who has accused Beijing of persecuting Christians.

Former U.S. officials told Fox News Digital they are skeptical human rights concerns will play a central role during a summit primarily focused on lowering tensions and stabilizing economic ties between the two powers.

Taiwan and technology restrictions are also expected to loom over the talks. Beijing continues to oppose U.S. arms sales and support for Taiwan, while Washington has tightened export controls targeting China’s advanced semiconductor and AI sectors.

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For President Donald Trump, the summit offers an opportunity to showcase economic wins and diplomatic engagement ahead of the 2026 midterms (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)

Still, despite the escalating rivalry, neither Washington nor Beijing appears eager for a direct confrontation.

For Trump, the summit offers an opportunity to showcase economic wins and diplomatic engagement ahead of the 2026 midterms. 

For Xi, analysts say, the goal is far more measured: preserve stability, avoid confrontation and continue positioning China for a prolonged strategic competition with the United States.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is fast becoming the greatest fabulist since Aesop.

Recently, Ocasio-Cortez insisted that true billionaires are a capitalist myth since “you can’t earn a billion dollars.” However, her greatest work of fiction may be her insistence that the Framers fought against billionaires and would have joined her and other socialists in seeking to eradicate them today.

Bertrand Russell once noted that “there is something feeble and a little contemptible” about those “who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.”

The American left has long peddled such “comfortable myths” as the wealthy “not paying their fair share” of taxes. The top 1% of income earners pay over 40% of federal taxes, and that percentage goes up to 70% for the top 10%.

AOC DOUBLES DOWN ON ‘MYTH’ OF EARNING A BILLION DOLLARS, CLAIMS FORTUNES ARE BUILT ON ‘ABUSE’

However, Ocasio-Cortez has become a liberal Homer for her reputation for spinning collectivist tales. What is impressive is her myth-within-a-myth signature style: “You can’t earn that, right? And so you have to create a myth … you have to create a myth of earning it.”

In a discussion at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, Ocasio-Cortez gave her revisionist account of the Founders as, surprise, budding anti-capitalists:

“I want to talk about how this is in the heritage of our country, because America was founded … you look at Thomas Jefferson writing to Madison in revolt of British aristocracy. The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time. And we are declaring independence from such an extreme marriage of wealth and power and the state that the voices of everyday people did not exist.”

AOC TRIPLES DOWN, CLAIMS AMERICAN REVOLUTION WAS AGAINST ‘THE BILLIONAIRES OF THEIR TIME’

In my recent book, “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss the economic philosophy of the Founders in exploring the history and future of this unique republic.

While Ocasio-Cortez references our 250th anniversary, she ignores that it is also the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations.” Smith’s free-market theory was an instant hit with the founding generation. These men had just created the first major Enlightenment Revolution based on a belief in natural rights that came from God, not governments.

Yet, they knew that true individual liberty could not be achieved without economic freedom. Smith’s economic theory was the perfect companion for their political theory.

PROTECTING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE IN OUR 250TH YEAR

The combination of American democratic theories and free-market theories produced the world’s most successful and oldest democracy in history. In “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss the threats to this republic, including from figures like Ocasio-Cortez, who spread socialist myths. The book calls for a recommitment to what I call a “liberty-enhancing economy.”

That is why this particular myth told by Ocasio-Cortez was so jarring. The Founders were great believers in capitalism and the free market. They were not fighting “the billionaires of their time” over their wealth. Many of the Founders were themselves quite wealthy, including banker Robert Morris Jr., who was known as the “Financier of the Revolution.”

Adjusting for inflation and current rates, Morris would be a billionaire today.

DAVID MARCUS: DON’T BE SO SURE SOCIALISTS CAN’T WIN IN THE HEARTLAND

The Founders believed in unleashing everyone’s ability to become a Morris. They fought against the taking or occupation of property by the government. At the very top of their stated purpose for the American Revolution was “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on Feb. 13, 2026. (Alex Kraus/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The phrase was virtually ripped from the page of John Locke’s “life, liberty, and property.” Locke believed that there was a natural right to property created by what God left “in common” for humanity. Preceding any government, it was a right that belonged to human beings by divine grant. Hardly a roaring endorsement of socialist ideals or, as Zohran Mamdani put it, the “warmth of collectivism.”

George Mason relied on Locke for his draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which Jefferson relied on heavily. Mason wrote of “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

THE UNWINNABLE WAR AMERICA’S FOUNDING FATHERS FOUGHT AND WON CHANGED HUMAN HISTORY FOREVER

Of course, the property reference was changed to happiness in the Declaration, which reflected the more transcendent values of these Enlightenment devotees.

While reduced to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” the original language appeared in the Fifth Amendment and, later, in the Fourteenth Amendment, protecting citizens from being “deprived of life, liberty, or property.”

In his 1792 essay “Property,” Madison echoed Lockean values in declaring that good government “secures to every man whatever is his own.”

WASHINGTON DEMS PASSED AN INCOME TAX THEY KNOW IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. THAT WAS THE POINT

Other early figures, like Chief Justice John Marshall, wrote, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”

The greatest irony is that Ocasio-Cortez personifies what the Founders truly wanted to combat. They feared mobocracy and the tyranny of the majority, the arbitrary power that can come from majoritarian abuse.

The new myth-making on the left is meant to revive what I previously described as “economic factionalism,” seeking political power with this type of “eat-the-rich” rhetoric. It is working, as it has throughout history. In California, many are pushing a “billionaires’ tax,” while far-left figures like Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are pushing for a federal variation.

In states from Washington to Virginia, Democrats are virtually chasing wealthy taxpayers out of blue states with planned millionaire taxes.

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To achieve such radical change, you must first destroy the values upon which this republic was born, convincing people that their fundamental ties to capitalism are as ephemeral as true billionaires.

The greatest irony is that Ocasio-Cortez personifies what the Founders truly wanted to combat. They feared mobocracy and the tyranny of the majority, the arbitrary power that can come from majoritarian abuse.

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Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and others are truly not new or particularly interesting additions to the political dialogue. They are the same voices of democratic despotism that Madison and others sought to quell.

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My mornings begin with coffee — how did I ever get through high school without coffee? — and the “News Items” newsletter from John Ellis, longtime NBC News poobah whose reputation for fairness and seriousness led his hobby of collecting key stories and circulating a summary of them to friends and family to become an influential summary of the key stories from overnight as well as the obscure and the incredible (but always true and very well sourced).

John’s missive had been my 6 AM companion for so many years that when he decided to expand the shop, I was one of scores of recipients who said “Hey, I’ll invest a few bucks to grow that project — the country needs one newsletter that does not spin and can’t be spun,” and over the next many years it’s grown into a replacement for the long march through the legacy outlets for an AM update on the world’s news.

“News Items” doesn’t have a slant, so when it opens with a “Well that really matters!” moment, I paused and considered its vast implications. Wednesday’s “News Items” began this way:

MORNING GLORY: PRESIDENT TRUMP MUST REJECT A SECOND MUNICH AND HOLD FIRM AGAIN IRAN

“1. The Trump administration’s public portrayal of a shattered Iranian military is sharply at odds with what U.S. intelligence agencies are telling policymakers behind closed doors, according to classified assessments from early this month that show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities. Most alarming to some senior officials is evidence that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, which could threaten American warships and oil tankers transiting the narrow waterway. People with knowledge of the assessments said they show — to varying degrees, depending on the level of damage incurred at the different sites — that the Iranians can use mobile launchers that are inside the sites to move missiles to other locations. In some cases they can launch missiles directly from launchpads that are part of the facilities. Only three of the missile sites along the strait remain totally inaccessible, according to the assessments.”

Having given up on the New York Times years ago — and the already infamous “rape-trained dogs” column from Nicholas Kristof must have sent more subscribers who relied on the platform for actual news as opposed to recipes and puzzles or The Athletic to the exits — I would not have known about that report early yesterday but for “News Items.”

The newsletter can certainly be trusted to provide a faithful summary of a story from a platform that is not trusted by the center-right, but a story of consequence nonetheless.

The CIA — presumably the lead agency for the assessment that was leaked — is currently led by the very competent John Ratcliffe. But the CIA has a checkered record on Iran from 1979 when they didn’t see the Islamic Republic coming (much less what it portended) to 2007 when its “assessment” of Iran’s nuclear ambitions wholly missed the mark. That 2007 debacle should haunt consumers of this report:

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”

So declared the opening words of the key judgments of the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on “Iran’s Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities.” The CIA might have had collaborators in the broader Intelligence Community in that enormous “swing and a miss” of an NIE 19 years ago, but the damage it did in handcuffing President George W Bush regarding Iran in his closing months was vast.

Of course President Obama spent eight years trying to find ways to welcome Iran into the community of nations —including the now infamous pallets of cash Obama sent the IRGC as part of the JCPOW—perhaps not realizing because of that 2007 NIE that the Islamic Republic was and would always remain a rogue and dangerous theocracy run by a two lunatic dictators in succession since 1979, fanatics whose whole plan was to build and use nuclear weapons to end first Israel and then any other opponent of its end-times apocalyptic vision including the U.S. if it could build the missile capable of reaching the homeland. No update and improved NIE was ever leaked even after Israel pilfered the entire Iranian nuclear file. But we know Team Obama was ideologicallly predisposed to play and lose the three-card monte Iran has been playing with the world for half a century.

That’s a longer way of saying that (1) the new assessment could be as wrong as 2007’s, but (2) hope isn’t a strategy especially when it comes to the battle with Iran. This time, as with 2007, the president ought to again go with the Intelligence Community’s assessment.

Which should mean that the next wave of planning for massive strikes on Iran’s arsenal should already be far advanced.

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Iran’s immediate response the to the February 28 attacks was to lash out not just at Israel and U.S. bases, but at a dozen other countries and their militaries and infrastructure. Like the proverbial wounded beast, the lunatic regime went wild. Noted. Iran wasn’t chastened or changed by the massive blows that rained down on it. Rather, the lunatics that remained regrouped and doubled and tripled down on vengeance.

It is relatively calm now with President Trump in China, but the “News Items” summary of the New York Times’ summary of the intelligence leak should mean the resumption of strikes when President Trump returns.

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There is no point to negotiation with the third string fanatics in Tehran. There is only the path of sustained degradation of their capabilities and strangulation of their economy. Perhaps the Artesh will tire of not getting paid. Perhaps some colonel in the IRGC figures out how to gather enough other colonels to pull off a coup. There are paths forward, but hard to see how internal resistance to the crazies atop the regime congeals absent military means combined with an economic vise.

None of the paths forward should include leaving Iran as it is. Lunatics in the neighborhood shouldn’t have hand guns or rifles. Lunatics on the world stage shouldn’t have missiles, mines, drones and enriched uranium. It really is that simple. Alone or with Israel and our Gulf Allies, President Trump has to finish the job.

Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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