Administration

Trump, Xi highlight US, China cooperation in opening remarks

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by Mallory Wilson - 05/13/26 11:25 PM ET

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by Mallory Wilson - 05/13/26 11:25 PM ET

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President Trump signaled in his opening remarks at the bilateral meeting in Beijing on Thursday local time that he wants to do business with China and emphasized his friendship with Xi.

He boasted about the size of the delegation he brought, which included prominent executives like Apple’s Tim Cook, Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg and BlackRock’s Larry Fink, among others.

“We have the greatest business and the biggest, I guess. Best in the world. Amazing people, and they’re all with me,” Trump said. “We asked the top 30 in the world. Every single one of them said yes, and I didn’t want the second or the third in the company, I wanted only the top, and they’re here today to pay respects to you, China and they look forward to trade and doing business, and it’s going to be totally reciprocal on our behalf.”

The leaders were seated at a long table in the Great Hall of the People. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue were seated on either side of the president.

Trump called the meeting “maybe the biggest summit ever” and spoke of his relationship with Xi.

“We’ve had a fantastic relationship. We’ve gotten along when there were difficulties, we worked it out, I would call you, and you would call me, and whenever we had a problem, people don’t know whenever we had a problem, we worked it out very quickly,” Trump said. “We’re going to have a fantastic future together. I have such respect for China, the job you’ve done.”

He joked that people don’t like it when he calls Xi a great leader, “but I say it anyway, because it’s true.”

“It’s an honor to be with you. It’s an honor to be your friend,” he said. “And the relationship between China and the USA is going to be better than ever before.”

Xi, for his part, mentioned the significance of the meeting, saying the “whole world is watching.”

“Currently, transformation not seen in a century is accelerating across the globe, and the international situation is fluid and turbulent. The world has come to a new crossroads,” he said.

He mentioned the “Thucydides Trap,” a theory that describes the power struggle between an established power and a rising power and how that leads to a high probability of war.

“Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides trap and create a new paradigm of major country relations? Can we meet global challenges together and provide more stability for the world? Can we, in the interest of the well-being of our two peoples and the future of humanity, build a brighter future together for our bilateral relations?” Xi said.

“These are the questions vital to history, to the world and to the people,” he said. “They are the questions of our times that you and I need to answer as leaders of major countries.”

Xi said the U.S. and China should be “partners, not rivals.”

Neither leader went into detail about what could be discussed in the meeting.

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