HARVARD Kennedy School Neither China nor the United States scored a conclusive knockout at a recent summit, former ambassador explains - November 4, 2025

 HARVARD Kennedy School

Neither China nor the United States scored a conclusive knockout at a recent summit, former ambassador explains

Nicholas Burns, a former ambassador to China and HKS professor, describes the recent meeting between President Donald Trump and Chairman Xi Jinping as more of a “trade truce” than a lasting agreement.

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November 4, 2025

Last week, President Donald Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, the first time the two had met face-to-face since 2019. Trade relations were on the agenda. We spoke with Nicholas Burns, who served as U.S. ambassador to China during the Biden administration and is the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, about what the summit may mean for trade relations between the two countries and whether the United States was able to further any of its policy objectives.

Q: How would you characterize the current state of trade relations following the meeting between President Trump and Chairman Xi Jinping?

I think we can say in the aftermath of President Trump’s meeting in South Korea with Chairman Xi Jinping of China that there is an uneasy truce between the two countries on trade. The trade war between them began in the spring with Liberation Day, with President Trump’s articulation of a new United States trade policy and his raising tariffs against most governments in the world.

The two countries circled each other almost like two boxers in the ring. They punched. They counterpunched. Nobody won a knockout. No one won even a decision on points because they have agreed on two or three big issues, but there are so many other issues left to be decided. I think this trade war will go into 2026. What we saw in Seoul was a trade truce rather than a long-lasting trade deal.

Q: So, you would say there wasn’t much in terms of tangible progress on U.S. trade aims?

There was some progress. President Trump succeeded in convincing Chairman Xi that China should do more to help us on fentanyl, which is the leading cause of death in the United States for Americans 18 to 49 years old. The majority of the precursor chemicals that go into this synthetic opioid come from the Chinese black market.

When I was U.S. ambassador to China, we worked hard on this problem. President Biden was able to convince Chairman Xi that China should work with us. We made some progress, but not enough, and now President Trump is trying to push Xi Jinping further, which I think is a very good thing to do.

It’s good that President Trump elicited a commitment to do more on fentanyl from the Chinese side. Now, the question is whether the Chinese will meet their commitments to us. That will be something to watch for the remainder of this year and into 2026.

A second achievement of the summit meeting for the United States is the fact that China has agreed to resume major purchases of agriculture from the United States. China is the largest market for American agriculture overseas. In some years, nearly one fifth of all American agricultural exports go to China.

When I was U.S. ambassador in 2023, we sold $41 billion in U.S. farm products to China, $14 billion of which were soybeans. This year, China played hardball and in negotiations with the United States didn’t buy a single soybean.

President Trump has been able to convince the Chinese to go back to large-scale purchases of soybeans, sorghum, poultry products, and other agricultural products that are essential to our farm economy in the Midwest. That’s a second achievement.

A third is that Xi Jinping agreed that China would pause its export controls on rare earth metals for a year. That would have been extraordinarily injurious to global markets and supply chains. They have agreed to suspend that for a year.

 

Nicholas Burns headshot.

“In 2026 the two governments are going to have to assess whether this summit—this truce in the trade war—is going to be long lasting or whether we’re going to see a pattern of inconsistent application of these agreements.”

Nicholas Burns

So, there were some tangible benefits for the United States, but this was not a comprehensive trade deal. This was more a negotiation on several major issues. There are no enforcement measures. There’s nothing that’s linked to the World Trade Organization, so everything relies on the goodwill of both sides. And China’s record in these trade negotiations, going back many decades, is not very good. The Chinese have a pattern of agreeing to take certain measures, and then when it does not suit their interests, they later renege.

That’s exactly what they did to President Trump in his first term. He negotiated a trade deal with China. The Chinese made major commitments. One of my jobs, as ambassador to China for President Biden, was to implement the Trump tariffs. We implemented all of President Trump’s tariffs and maintained them, and President Trump has implemented the Biden tariffs. So, there’s been a degree of uniformity on the American side, but our experience with the Chinese is they don’t always honor their commitments. That’s something to look for in early 2026 as a way of judging whether this was in fact a successful summit meeting.

Q: Are there any clear next steps for the United States to make progress on trade aims?

One of the outstanding questions from this summit meeting was whether the United States is going to agree to relax our controls on the export of dual-use technology, advanced American technology, into the Chinese market.

President Biden, three years ago, prohibited the sale of advanced American semiconductors to China. He did that because we don’t want the Chinese to gain an advantage over the U.S. military in their acquisition of military technology that would be injurious to the U.S. military in the open competition for military power between China and the United States.

In the Chinese system, the “civil-military fusion” gives their government the right to demand any Chinese company, research institution, or university to transfer their technology or intellectual property to the People’s Liberation Army. We want to deny the People's Liberation Army our most sensitive technology, advanced semiconductors for AI purposes in this case.

There’s been a consistent Chinese demand that the Trump administration weaken or remove those export controls altogether. I think it would be a major mistake if the Trump administration follows that plan. They haven’t done it yet, but there’s a lot of confusion over what was and what was not agreed.

I'm against it for two reasons. One, we shouldn’t give the People's Liberation Army a technological advantage over the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force in their competition for power. Two, the United States and China are in a major competition for who will be first mover in artificial intelligence and the first to reach artificial general intelligence. Our most sophisticated chips from NVIDIA, Intel, and others would be of great assistance to China in that competition against the United States.

As ambassador, I worked very hard to defend U.S. business, to make sure that we had a healthy trade relationship, and that American businesses were trying to operate on a level playing field in a very competitive Chinese market. But the short-term revenues of a few American companies are not equal to the damage that could be done to our national security if these American companies are allowed to export to China their most sensitive technology.

I think that is a key issue to watch over the next six to 12 months, and I certainly hope that the Trump administration will honor the very tough-minded policy of President Biden, which was to deny China these technologies.

The economic relationship between the United States and China is very important. We’re the two largest global economies. The stability of the global economy is a function in large part of our ability to work together on trade and investment issues.

Our trade level last year was $642 billion dollars in goods and services with China. The effective tariff rate is now, after the summit, 47%. That will certainly reduce these trade levels.

In 2026 the two governments are going to have to assess whether this summit—this truce in the trade war—is going to be long lasting or whether we’re going to see a pattern of inconsistent application of these agreements. I’m afraid that’s been our experience with China for many, many years.

I certainly hope that the United States and the Trump administration will be successful. But we’re up against a country, in the People’s Republic of China, which has been inconsistent and has not always played by the rules. So, we have to be tough-minded in making sure that they deliver on the commitments they made.

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