The most common reaction — among U.S. observers — to the recent summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping is a sigh of relief. Fears that Trump would make concessions over Taiwan or U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific region, like Japan, that damage their interests proved groundless.

Instead, the prevailing conclusion is that the meeting was “a diplomatic nothing burger,” in the words of regional analyst James Crabtree, “plenty of pageantry, but no substance.” If “making nice” was the sum of the summit, then it should be considered a success, and not just for having avoided the worst-case outcome. Unfortunately, there may be negative consequences after all.

You have to squint to find actual deliverables from the meeting. The two men agreed to extend their trade truce for just two months and enact reciprocal tariff cuts on $60 billion in exports, or $30 billion apiece. Most of those are anticipated to be on agricultural goods.

The U.S. readout says the joint U.S.-China Board of Trade, announced in June to manage trade in nonsensitive goods, established a working group that will focus on market-access barriers in agriculture. It also reported that China committed to import 10 million tons of coal annually from the U.S. for two years, while both sides agreed to continue talks regarding U.S. concerns over rare earths and critical mineral shortages. Oh yeah — the U.S. gets two pandas, too.

Otherwise, it’s thin gruel. They agreed to work together on artificial intelligence, but they merely committed to set up a dialogue mechanism to exchange views on AI-related risks and benefits. It will meet in November; hopefully humanity will still be around then. They agreed to establish a bilateral communication channel for AI-related incidents that was referred to as a “hotline.” I don’t expect much from this for reasons I laid out recently.

The readouts mention geopolitical issues like Iran, North Korea and Russia in general terms, and acknowledged an intent to work together on counternarcotics efforts and at meetings like APEC and the Group of 20. Export controls on semiconductors weren’t mentioned, while Taiwan was only in the Chinese readout, as was the intent to sign a memorandum of understanding on mil-mil crisis........

© The Japan Times