Why Neither Trump Nor Xi Can Talk Their Way Out of the US-China Spiral

Orville Schell argues in Foreign Affairs that the Washington summit set to bring Xi Jinping and Donald Trump together on 24.09.2026 will not deliver the breakthrough both governments keep promising. Schell, who has watched the relationship's swings for decades, traces Washington's fixation on a single dramatic deal to the outsized diplomatic triumphs of the twentieth century, precedents that set an impossible bar for any modern encounter. Trump has bet that personal rapport with Xi can substitute for an alignment of interests the two countries do not actually share, a wager that produced no lasting change after their spring summit in Beijing despite advance billing as a “geopolitical heavyweight matchup.” Both leaders, Schell writes, are trapped inside domestic political logics that reward toughness over compromise on tariffs, technology controls and Taiwan alike, so whatever warmth is generated in the room evaporates once each returns home to hawkish constituencies. The result is a structural spiral that summitry can manage but not reverse, since neither Washington nor Beijing has an incentive to make the first concession. That leaves Thursday's meeting more pageant than pivot, Schell concludes, even as both delegations insist beforehand that a new era of stability is within reach.