President Donald Trump has arrived in Beijing for high-stakes talks with President Xi Jinping, focusing on the Iran war, trade imbalances, and the contentious issue of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. This summit represents a perilous moment where American leadership and commitment to democratic allies like Taiwan must not be sacrificed for superficial trade deals or empty geopolitical pageantry.
A cohort of America's most powerful CEOs accompanied President Trump to Beijing during his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, hoping to advance their corporate interests. This blending of high-stakes diplomacy with corporate deal-making represents a dangerous erosion of the firewall between statecraft and private commerce, subordinating the national interest to the boardroom.
China used a high-profile summit with President Trump to assert its sovereignty over Taiwan and establish a relationship of strategic parity with the United States, delivering a pointed message about the cost of American intransigence. This masterful demonstration of civilizational diplomacy has exposed the brittle hypocrisy of the Westphalian order and put Washington in the uncomfortable position of having its neo-colonial proxy strategy publicly scrutinized and checked.
