President Donald Trump is set to leave Tuesday for Beijing to meet with President Xi Jinping after weeks of trying, and failing, to persuade the Chinese government to use its considerable leverage to prod Iran to agree to US terms for ending the war.
The trip that was supposed to be a victory lap on a concluded Iran war has become a working session on a conflict that is still alive, still disrupting 20% of global oil supply, and still killing people in Lebanon, the UAE, and the Strait of Hormuz.
What the Summit Looks Like
Trump is due to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday evening, according to the White House. The following morning, he will participate in a welcome ceremony and hold a bilateral meeting with Xi, before they tour the historic Temple of Heaven — a 15th-century landmark in central Beijing. The evening is set to close with a state banquet.
The White House has invited more than a dozen US executives to join Trump on his trip to China. The leaders include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg.
Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Boeing CEO. The business delegation is a signal: Trump wants to convert the summit into a deal-making environment where trade concessions on both sides — tariffs, market access, technology — are traded simultaneously with diplomatic convergence on Iran. Bringing Silicon Valley and aerospace executives to Beijing means Trump is offering China’s market something in return for China’s Iran pressure.
Trump and the expected visit by Putin will round out a dozen or so leaders who have come through Beijing in just the first five months of 2026 as China’s clout grows. Ahead of Trump, Xi hosted Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon. Last week, Iran’s foreign minister also traveled to Beijing for the first time since the Iran war.
Putin is also visiting Beijing this week. The convergence of Trump, Putin and the aftermath of Araghchi’s visit in the same week at the same venue is unprecedented diplomatic choreography. Beijing is simultaneously the venue for US-China trade normalization, Russia-China strategic alignment, and — indirectly — the next phase of Iran war diplomacy.
What Trump Needs From Xi
Trump had set tariffs on Chinese goods at 145% and China announced a further tightening of rare-earth export controls that would have hurt US industry — before the governments backed off from inflicting maximalist penalties on each other. The two sides reached a fragile truce in their long-running trade disputes in October.
Trump and other administration officials have made the case that the Iran conflict — particularly the closure of the strait — has caused greater harm to China and its Pacific neighbors than it has to the United States, which is far less dependent on Middle East oil.
“China is an export-driven economy. That means they depend on other countries to buy from them,” Rubio told reporters last week, making the case that it was in China’s interest for Iran to let traffic resume.
The US argument to China is economic: Hormuz closure hurts China more than the US, because China depends on Middle East oil for 50%+ of its imports and the export economy that keeps Chinese factories running depends on global supply chain normalisation. If China can use its leverage over Iran to reopen Hormuz, China benefits economically — it just needs to be willing to use that leverage before extracting maximum trade concessions from Washington.
What Xi Has That Trump Needs
China is one of the few countries with relations with Iran and Gulf countries. Beijing would want to help resolve the tensions. China is Iran’s largest trade partner and the top buyer of its oil. It provides China a degree of leverage. With the war dragging on far longer than the Trump administration’s previous prediction of a four-to-six-week endeavour, some see China gaining a positional advantage.
“The most pressing agenda Item is the Iran-Hormuz crisis,” Nomura’s Chief China Economist Ting Lu said in a note Monday.
Xi holds three cards Trump needs: economic pressure on Iran through shadow fleet purchase suspension; political pressure through direct China-Iran diplomatic channels; and cover for a deal that allows Trump to frame any agreement as internationally supported rather than bilateral capitulation to Iranian demands. All three are available to Xi — and all three have a price.
