Trump-Xi meeting leaves Taiwan navigating a more managed but not less competitive US-China rivalry, experts say

Experts say that the Trump-Xi meeting in September produced a pause in the US-China trade confrontation but little evidence of a strategic rapprochement, leaving Taiwan to navigate a relationship in which economic interdependence and technological rivalry are becoming increasingly intertwined.

A truce rather than a reset

When US President Donald Trump welcomed Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平) to Washington on Sept. 23, the choreography was unmistakably grand.

Yet beneath the ceremony, the summit yielded a relatively modest substantive outcome: The two sides extended their existing trade truce by two months, to Jan. 10, 2027, while agreeing to continue negotiations on tariffs, agricultural trade, critical minerals and other economic issues.

John Mearsheimer, an American scholar in international relations, said on Sept. 29 that there is almost universal consensus that the two leaders failed to reach meaningful agreements on issues such as AI, trade, Iran, and Taiwan.

On Sept. 29, David Lai Jung-wei (賴榮偉), the head of the nonprofit organization Taiwan Inspiration Association, said at a panel discussion that this distinction matters. He added that the meeting did not dismantle the architecture of US-China strategic competition.

Washington continues to treat semiconductors, advanced technology and supply-chain resilience as matters of economic and national security, while Beijing continues to pursue greater technological self-reliance and more self-supporting industrial supply chains.

Rare earths, however, remained an unresolved point of leverage. The United States and China agreed to keep working on shortages of rare earths and other critical minerals, with Washington seeking a return to more “appropriate” shipment levels.

But the summit did not produce a comprehensive settlement of the issue. For Taiwan, whose semiconductor industry occupies a pivotal position in global technology supply chains, the unresolved leverage over critical minerals carries significance beyond the headline value of the temporary trade arrangement.

Taiwan’s value lies in what it can offer now

For Chen Fang-yu (陳方隅), an associate professor at Soochow University, the summit should not prompt Taiwan to overreact to Trump's occasional remarks that may appear unfavorable to Taipei. He said at the same Sept. 29 panel discussion that he too believes US-China strategic competition has not been altered.

The more consequential question, he said, is what Taiwan can contribute to the United States under today's strategic circumstances.

Chen said that Taiwan should emphasize its valuable role in helping the United States rebuild industrial capacity and maintain technological competitiveness, particularly through its semiconductor and technology industries.

Rather than dwelling on the historical period of US-China cooperation and emphasizing that the “China” of that era referred to the Republic of China, whose current administration governs Taiwan, rather than the later-established People's Republic of China, Chen said Taiwan would be better served by focusing on its present-day strategic utility.

His argument points to a broader geoeconomic shift: Taiwan's leverage increasingly rests not only on its geopolitical position, but also on its capacity to remain indispensable to critical technology supply chains.

AI competition is being managed, not resolved

The summit's technology dimension also illustrates the limits of the détente between the US and China.

Lai I-chung (賴怡忠), president of the Taiwan-based think tank The Prospect Foundation, said Washington and Beijing were not moving toward meaningful technological cooperation when it came to AI. Instead, they were attempting to manage competition and contain its risks.

The two powers had agreed to establish channels for dialogue and risk management, according to the White House, but Lai I-chung said neither appears prepared to relinquish the technological contest itself.

Lai I-chung contrasted Washington's push to accelerate AI development through initiatives such as Pax Silica with the more risk-conscious approaches adopted by some other Western countries, while China continues to pursue its technological objectives within the constraints imposed by US export controls.

He noted that for Taiwan, this creates a strategic environment that must be navigated carefully.

No formal G2 yet

Lai I-chung also cautioned against interpreting the summit as evidence that the international system has entered a genuine G2 era.

Despite the prominence of Trump and Xi, he argued that the United States still possesses greater overall national power and that the summit did not establish joint US-China management of world affairs.

The distinction matters for Taiwan because a formalized G2 arrangement could imply that smaller economies would increasingly be treated as objects of negotiation between the two major powers.

Stephen Tan (譚耀南), managing director of the Taipei-based International Policy Advisory Group, identified another consequence that is more immediate: The meeting could strengthen Beijing's domestic and international narrative that China is negotiating with the United States on an equal footing.

Tan said that Chinese messaging, especially within the country, may increasingly frame the encounter as evidence that the country has crossed the so-called Thucydides Trap and is advancing toward the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

Internationally, he said, Beijing could use a more explicitly bipolar narrative to portray the world as increasingly organized around two major powers.

For Taiwan, Tan said he expects the implications to be felt not only through economic policy but also through information and cognitive warfare, including a greater volume of Chinese-language narratives aimed at shaping public perceptions on the island.

The next round may matter more

Lai I-chung also argued that the meeting should be viewed in the context of the political calendar in Washington.

He said that Trump currently has greater incentives to seek concessions from China ahead of the US midterm elections, which may help explain the relatively restrained posture he has adopted toward Beijing at this stage.

He added that if Trump returns to the negotiating table with Xi after the elections, Lai I-chung expects Trump's room for maneuver to expand, potentially producing a more assertive US posture in subsequent meetings.

The asymmetry, he argued, could eventually run in the opposite direction for Xi. While Trump would face fewer immediate electoral constraints after the midterms, Xi would have his own political considerations as he seeks to secure a fourth term.

The result, Lai I-chung concluded, could be a changing balance of leverage as the two leaders move toward a third and fourth round of direct engagement this year.

NYU-trained global affairs commentator Chao Chun-shuo (趙君朔) told TCN that the meeting was shorter than some observers had anticipated and that many economic issues had already been negotiated by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰).

The temporary nature of the trade arrangement, he argued, means that the more consequential bargaining may still lie ahead. With the current truce scheduled to run only until January, the two sides have preserved considerable room for further negotiation — and confrontation.

Chao also characterized the summit as highly polished in presentation but less substantial in outcome than its symbolism might suggest.

The contrast, Chao argued, was visible in the broader choreography surrounding Trump's engagement with Xi: Washington could offer diplomatic ceremony while simultaneously signaling that strategic disagreements remained unresolved.

Watching the contents, not the numbers

David Lai offered another way of reading the economic consequences. Rather than focusing primarily on the dollar value attached to the US-China trade arrangements, he said observers should examine what is actually being traded.

If the agreements remain concentrated on consumer goods and other products that were already broadly tradable, they would indicate continuity more than structural change.

David Lai stated that a shift toward strategically sensitive areas such as AI, advanced technology or rare earths, by contrast, would be a more consequential signal about the direction of the relationship that Taiwanese ought to pay attention to.

For now, the Trump-Xi summit appears to have bought Washington and Beijing time rather than resolved their rivalry.

For Taiwan, the task is therefore less about predicting whether the two powers will reconcile than about assessing where their competition is moving next — and ensuring that Taiwan's own technological and economic contribution remains difficult to replace.