When Chinese President Xi Jinping touches down at Joint Base Andrews on 23 September, US President Donald Trump is set to greet him in person on the tarmac—an uncommon courtesy rarely granted to visiting heads of state. The contrast is sharp: when Trump visited Beijing in May, Xi stayed away from the airport and left the initial reception to Vice-President Han Zheng, offering a formal welcome only the next day. Trump’s choice to meet Xi at the airfield therefore signals more than mere protocol.

The symbolism is clear. Despite remaining strategic rivals, both leaders are pouring effort into personal diplomacy to keep their competition from spiralling into open conflict. Xi’s programme includes a formal White House arrival, a military review, a state dinner and further talks, transforming the 24 September summit into a tightly staged blend of ceremony, diplomacy and tough negotiation.

After almost four years, Trump and Xi will sit down in Washington at a time when trade, tariffs, rare earths, artificial intelligence, Taiwan and wider geopolitical flashpoints have become tightly interwoven. The meeting is therefore far more than another encounter between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies. It will test whether strategic rivalry can be contained through face-to-face bargaining.

For India the summit carries particular weight. New Delhi has long practised careful equidistance among Washington, Moscow and Beijing. Any understanding between Trump and Xi would not automatically rewrite India’s strategic calculus, yet it could reshape the environment in which that balancing act is performed.

Why Trump has shifted diplomatic gear

Trump’s second-term foreign policy has unfolded differently from the isolationist tone of his campaign. He had promised to scale back America’s role in drawn-out wars, yet Washington remains heavily involved in the Iran crisis while the Ukraine conflict drags on without resolution. The result has been a pivot from talk of withdrawal to energetic diplomacy aimed at extracting concrete deals from both adversaries and partners.

Personal diplomacy has gained new prominence in this approach. Trump appears convinced that direct talks with leaders such as Xi and Vladimir Putin can deliver outcomes that traditional diplomatic channels have failed to achieve. His method is transactional: tariffs become bargaining chips, sanctions become leverage, and economic ties are linked to larger strategic trade-offs.

China represents the sternest test of this method. Beijing cannot be treated as a pure economic rival; it is simultaneously a major trading power, a technological competitor, a military force and an influential player across Russia, Iran and the Global South.

Practical pressures also drive the shift. Open-ended competition with China on every front exacts a growing toll on the American economy. The current trade arrangement nears its November deadline, while........

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