The Trump-Xi summit: Why Europe has so much at stake

As Chinese President Xi Jinping lands in the US on Wednesday for a three-day summit with US President Donald Trump, Europeans will be watching closely for any decisions that could directly affect their economic interests. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Trump and Xi's third meeting in just under a year will cover issues ranging from trade to AI and rare earths. The two sides agreed on a trade truce in October 2025 after weeks of trade tensions, and the two leaders met again in Beijing last May. The EU, meanwhile, began crucial negotiations with Beijing in June aimed at reducing its €1 billion-a-day trade deficit, setting a looming October deadline for tangible progress. Since their China-US summit last year, the Iran war has erupted, triggering a surge in energy prices and ramping up pressure on the US President ahead of the November midterm elections. On China’s side, shipments to the US surged by 34.4% in a year, widening China's trade surplus to about $29.2 billion, according to Chinese data. "Xi Jinping arrives in Washington with the upper hand, even on American soil," Alicia García Herrero, an expert at Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, said. Several issues on the table for Xi and Trump directly concern the EU. So what can Europeans expect from the US-China summit? Tariff cuts The trade truce, due to expire on 10 November, will be on the agenda, a year after it ended a trade war between the two with tit-for-tat tariffs exceeding 100%. For the Europeans, US tariffs on China are always a wrong signal, as they reroute Chinese exports to the EU market. However, this week's summit might lead to stabilisation between Washington and Beijing. According to US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, China and the US will make “some ‌announcements on agriculture and non-tariff barriers.” A mutual tariff reduction covering $30 billion in goods is also expected. “What we expect is for Trump to gain a sort of a win that he can sell for the midterm elections, and China to simply buy some more time to strengthen its industrial base,” Ivano di Carlo, an expert from the European Policy Centre (EPC), told Euronews. Europe squeezed on rare earths The trade truce also included exports of rare earths. During last year's trade war, Beijing had blocked global exports of the strategic materials, key for EU industry, for which it holds a monopoly of production and processing. The issue was raised last week by EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič during a video call with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Wentao. But Washington has far greater negotiating power than Brussels when it comes to securing access to the materials, García Herrero told Euronews. “The US will negotiate for Europe and Europe will have to pay a price for that,” García Herrero said. Europe non-existent on AI The two powers are also expected to discuss artificial intelligence, amid growing calls for international safeguards. Two weeks ago, Jacob Coxon, who has worked as a researcher at both AI heavyweights OpenAI and Anthropic, said on X that both companies are “gambling with our lives” and that people building AI “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” raising global concerns around this technology. Several incidents were also reported over the summer, including OpenAI agents hacking another AI company, Hugging Face’s platform. Both China and the US have expressed concern about the risks surrounding AI development, but they are also locked in an intensifying technological competition. On Sunday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng discussed an “AI hotline” proposal, which would be a “notification mechanism” between Washington and China to warn each other when an AI incident becomes serious enough to threaten national security. “This AI dialogue that is going to become like a red button during the nuclear race is only shared by the US and China,” García Herrero said. “So it really leaves Europe as non-existent in terms of being a pole.” According to the expert, the summit will “confirm the G20 nature of the world.”