Trump and Xi are due to meet in Washington on September 24. The four months since their last encounter have brought contrasting fortunes. China’s trade with the world has surged under Xi Jinping; Donald Trump, meanwhile, has watched his approval ratings slide at home.
The September 24 summit may prove consequential for reasons extending well beyond trade and Taiwan. After a series of costly foreign-policy entanglements culminating in the US/Israel war on Iran, Washington appears increasingly drawn towards selective retrenchment from the Middle East and renewed concentration on the Western Hemisphere.
Yet, extricating itself from Iran may require cooperation from the very power Trump once sought to coerce economically. If Beijing uses its leverage over Tehran to facilitate an end to the war, the summit could mark something larger: the emergence of a global architecture in which Washington remains militarily pre-eminent but increasingly shares crisis-management space with China, including in a Middle East long dominated by American power.
From overextension to selective retrenchment
Trump returned to office in his second term promising to concentrate American power and extract concessions through tariffs, sanctions and coercive diplomacy. However, his administration has become simultaneously entangled with Iran, Ukraine, China, NATO and Europe while devoting growing political attention to the Western Hemisphere and Arctic. The Iran war is particularly important because it has imposed domestic economic and political costs: Reuters reports that Trump enters the Xi meeting with record-low approval ratings amid higher prices associated with the conflict.
At the same time, Trump’s attention to Venezuela, Canada, Greenland and hemispheric security can be interpreted as evidence of a more geographically concentrated conception of American primacy. This hemispheric turn has acquired its own shorthand: the so-called “Donroe Doctrine,”Trump’s reworking of the Monroe Doctrine around a more assertive effort to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere and limit the strategic foothold of extra-regional powers, particularly China. The recently concluded Greenland arrangement is a case in point, as it expands long-term US military access while restricting strategic penetration by non-NATO powers.
These moves point towards a hierarchy of strategic priorities rather than a retreat from international affairs. Faced with finite political, military and economic resources, the administration appears increasingly inclined to privilege areas closest to the American homeland and most directly connected to US security, resources and strategic access. In this reading, Trump’s recent tantrums are not disparate preoccupations but manifestations of a broader hemispheric turn.
Trumpism may not represent isolationism so much as a geographical reprioritisation of American power: away from the costly management of the Middle Eastern, East Asian, and European orders and towards a more concentrated defence of the Western Hemisphere, Arctic approaches and the United States’ immediate strategic perimeter.
Iran could transform the meaning of the Trump–Xi summit
On the surface, the summit is about trade, AI, critical minerals and Taiwan. China enters it in a stronger negotiating position than Washington might have expected. Its global trade surplus is heading towards another $1 trillion-plus year, and Trump’s tariff strategy has not produced the concessions initially envisaged. Reuters notes that more than half of the roughly 6,500 Chinese product categories exported to the US this year have actually increased relative to 2025.
This reversal in leverage is particularly significant because it intersects with Washington’s predicament in Iran. In his second term, Trump sought to compel Beijing through tariffs and economic pressure; he now approaches Xi potentially needing Chinese cooperation on a conflict that has become increasingly costly at home and difficult to resolve militarily. The irony is striking: a strategy intended to demonstrate the coercive reach of American power may have created circumstances in which Washington must bargain with its principal strategic competitor to facilitate an exit from war.
But underneath those issues sits Iran. The Iran war may be understood not simply as another costly American intervention, but as an accelerant of a deeper regional transition. Marc Lynch argues that it has exposed the limits of the post-Cold War order, built on US security guarantees and acceptance of American primacy.
However, such a situation does not imply an abrupt withdrawal. Drawing a parallel with the 1956 Suez crisis, Lynch argues that “American primacy will not disappear immediately,” even as doubts about US power and purpose have crossed a “tipping point.” Washington will remain a formidable military actor, but regional states are likely to exercise greater autonomy and deepen relations with other powers, particularly China. Beijing previously benefited from an American-maintained regional order without seriously challenging it. The Iran crisis may now test whether China is prepared to move beyond benefiting from that order to helping shape what comes next.
The distinction matters. Retrenchment need not mean automatic and abrupt withdrawal, just as declining primacy does not imply American irrelevance. Rather, it describes a redistribution of agency: Washington remains powerful, but regional states and external powers gain greater room to manoeuvre. The Trump–Xi summit therefore matters because it may reveal whether China is beginning to occupy some of the diplomatic space created by this gradual loosening of American primacy.
Washington increasingly needs something from Beijing that tariffs cannot easily obtain: Chinese leverage over Tehran. China remains Iran’s most consequential major economic partner, while Washington has conspicuously refrained so far from applying its threatened secondary-sanctions campaign fully against China.
Beijing’s leverage, however, should not be overstated. Its influence derives less from control over Tehran than from the economic lifelines, commercial ties and diplomatic access it can offer—or potentially withhold. China also has strong incentives to prevent prolonged disruption to energy flows and regional trade. The critical question is whether Beijing is prepared to convert economic interdependence into diplomatic leverage, pressuring Tehran toward accommodation while simultaneously extracting concessions from Washington.
Therefore, the significance of the Washington summit lies in whether China moves from being an interested bystander in the Iran conflict to an indispensable interlocutor in ending it.
From American order to negotiated spheres of influence?
If Washington ultimately requires Beijing’s diplomatic and economic leverage to help extricate itself from the Iran conflict, the significance extends beyond Iran. It would suggest that the United States can no longer independently manage crises in a region it has dominated strategically for decades.
China has shown little appetite for assuming the enormous military, financial and political burdens historically associated with American domination of the Middle East. The more plausible development is an asymmetric division of influence.
The US could retain formidable military capabilities, Gulf partnerships, and security relationships while reducing its willingness to act as the region’s permanent crisis manager. China could simultaneously acquire greater diplomatic, commercial and geo-economic influence without necessarily reproducing America’s security architecture.
The War on Iran is already showing signs of this shift. China’s changing oil demand has acquired unusual influence over global oil-market dynamics during the conflict, at a moment when OPEC+’s traditional capacity to stabilise markets has weakened.
Such an arrangement would not amount to a US–China condominium over the Middle East. Nor would it require Beijing to replace Washington as the region’s security guarantor. Instead, it could produce a more differentiated architecture of power: the United States retaining much of the region’s hard-security infrastructure, China exercising growing economic and diplomatic influence, and regional powers themselves acquiring greater strategic autonomy. The result would be less a transfer of hegemony than the fragmentation of functions once concentrated overwhelmingly in American hands.
Whether China can help end the Iran war remains an open question. However, the Trump–Xi summit may reveal a broader shift in great-power relations: America is discovering that military supremacy no longer guarantees diplomatic dominance, while China is learning that economic clout brings geopolitical responsibilities.
