- Tone shift. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called his September 20 meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng “successful,” signalling that both sides are managing expectations carefully ahead of the September 24 Xi-Trump summit rather than engineering a confrontation.
- Goodwill architecture. The US-China Board of Trade has been “operationalised,” Chinese state enterprises placed a 260,000-tonne US soybean order, and Xi is reportedly bringing a large business delegation — an unusual commercial framing for a state visit.
- One live tripwire. Beijing has not formally confirmed the summit and has warned it will cancel if Washington approves a pending $14 billion Taiwan arms sale before the leaders meet.
The week leading into the September 24 Xi-Trump summit has been characterised by deliberate choreography on both sides. Bessent met He Lifeng in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and described the exchange as “successful” — a deliberately understated characterisation that both delegations have applied to preparatory meetings throughout 2026 to avoid over-promising.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the two countries had “operationalised” the US-China Board of Trade, a bilateral coordination mechanism established earlier this year aimed at routing trade disputes through structured negotiation rather than unilateral tariff escalation. The signal: both governments want a working framework in place regardless of what the summit itself produces.
Xi’s Business Delegation as a Signal
Xi is preparing a large business delegation to accompany him to Washington — a move described by analysts at the Asia Society as “a rare occurrence” designed to signal Beijing’s “willingness to support investment and commercial ties” with the United States. The framing is deliberate: China wants to emphasise economic opportunity rather than strategic rivalry in the meeting’s public narrative.
That framing extended to agricultural trade: Chinese state-owned enterprises placed orders for approximately 260,000 tonnes of US soybeans on September 21, a concrete purchase timed to provide visible progress on trade ahead of the bilateral calendar. Critical minerals, technology export controls, and a proposed bilateral AI risk-and-safety dialogue are also on the formal agenda, with the AI framework unsettled in terms of participants and scope.
The Taiwan Tripwire
Despite the positive signals, Beijing has consistently warned that it will cancel the summit if Washington approves a pending $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan before September 24. As noted when China first issued that warning in August, the sale has been submitted to Congress but not formally authorised, and the White House has given no public indication of its timing.
The summit would be Xi’s first White House visit in nearly a decade. Both governments have invested significant diplomatic capital in reaching this point: Xi has conducted extensive preparatory state visits through BRICS, the SCO, and Cairo, while the Trump administration operationalised new trade machinery and dispatched Bessent to New York for final-week consultations. The Heritage Foundation described expectations as focused on reaffirming the trade-war ceasefire from May, with no dramatic new announcements expected.
Whether the Taiwan arms question is resolved, deferred, or allowed to derail the meeting will likely define how the next phase of US-China relations is framed — and how much room the business delegations on both sides have to operate.