Donald Trump flew to Beijing this week, and when he sits down with China’s President Xi Jinping on Thursday morning he will want three things: a tariff truce that survives his own courts, Chinese pressure on Iran to end the war that never seems to end, and a photograph that makes him look victorious.

Xi has problems of his own. But he has watched four American presidencies from Zhongnanhai, the walled compound beside the Forbidden City where the Communist party leadership rules, and he knows the value of silence when his counterpart is talking himself into trouble. Trump’s approval rating is the lowest of his second term.

Trump has obliged Xi noisily. In February, the Supreme Court ruled, six to three, that the emergency powers he had used for most of his tariffs did not authorise tariffs at all. The law in question was the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Trump had turned into the legal foundation for his tariffs last year. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, held that the statute did not give the President authority to impose tariffs of ‘unlimited amount, duration and scope’. The Chief Justice was, in effect, telling the President of the United States to read his own statutes.

What Xi wants from this meeting is recognition: two great powers, two systems, meeting as equals

What Xi wants from this meeting is recognition: two great powers, two systems, meeting as equals

Less than three months later, last Thursday, a second court struck down the tariffs that replaced the earlier ones. The administration appealed quickly, and tariffs are still being collected at the border from most importers. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has told audiences that tariff revenue will be ‘virtually unchanged’ this year, but the administration’s remaining legal routes are narrower and slower than the one the Court took away. Trump’s main lever is gone, and Xi can see him wielding a handle attached to nothing.

Nearly nine years ago, the same two men met in the same city, and the picture looked very different. Xi gave Trump a private dinner in the Forbidden City and Trump called Xi ‘a very special man’. But the two leaders have not met on Chinese soil since. The intervening nine years brought a trade war, a pandemic, a chip-controls regime, and Beijing’s continued slow construction of a rival order outside American gatekeeping. Chinese Communist party (CCP) state media now treats........

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