Trump Returns from China after Giving Them What They Always Been After From the U.S.

Yes, I also subscribe to and read Professor Heather’s site. If you do not know of Prof. Hearther. The Prof. is a political historian who uses facts and history to make observations about contemporary American politics. In my humble opinion, Professor Heather typically gets it right. I have not found a reason to disagree.

In this commentary Prof. Heather is discussing Trump’s trip to China. If I read her commentary correctly, Trump was fawning all over Xi giving him what he wanted from United States presidents. In which case, the United States has taken a step backwards in the world. In the past, I did not get the feeling we were meeting China as equals. Read for yourself.

May 15, 2026

Prof. Heather Cox Richardson

President Donald J. Trump arrived back in the United States of America today after a three-day state visit to China. Isaac Arnsdorf, Michael Birnbaum, and Michelle Ye Hee Lee of the Washington Post note that the summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping yielded:

“exactly what Xi aimed to achieve with the visit.”

Its pageantry and Trump’s gestures of friendship and admiration showed the U.S. and China as peers, something previous U.S. leaders have rejected.

In an interview with Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity that aired today, Trump said: “It’s the two great countries. I call it the G-2. This is the G-2. I think it’ll go down as a very important moment in history.”

Former China director on the National Security Council Julian Gewirtz, who served under President Joe Biden, told the Washington Post reporters:

“Xi has done something Chinese leaders have been working toward for decades—bringing an American president to Beijing as an undisputed peer. Xi used the opulent optics of the visit to make clear to the world that China and the United States are the two dominant, equally matched superpowers. There is no going back.”

Xi has said before he thinks “the East is rising and the West declining.” Referring to that idea Thursday, before the two leaders met in Beijing, Xi made it clear he sees the U.S. as a declining power and pondered, “Can China and the United States overcome the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and create a new paradigm of major country relations?”

The Thucydides Trap is a theory, put forward by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison, that when a rising power threatens to replace an existing power, the conflict between the two tends to spark a war.

As if to illustrate that the U.S. is a declining power, the Chinese media downplayed the importance of a visit from a U.S. president. As James Palmer of Foreign Policy noted, on the day Trump arrived, the main story on the front page of the state-run English-language newspaper China Daily was the visit of the president of Tajikistan the day before. The Chinese Communist Party newspaper featured Trump’s visit on page 3.

Trump seemed to miss the larger context of the honors he so clearly enjoyed, telling the Fox News Channel’s Brett Baier that the summit was a success and that the most significant win for the United States was “relationship. It’s all about relationship. I have a very good relationship with President Xi and with China. And it sounds like something that doesn’t mean anything, but it’s everything in dealmaking and problems we’ve solved. The two of us have solved a lot of problems between— that somebody else would have maybe done very badly with. We’ve solved a lot of problems over the years.”

Tamara Keith and Jennifer Pak of NPR noted that Xi did not return Trump’s personal praise, speaking instead about relations between the U.S. and China.

Keith and Pak also reported that Trump boasted the visit had produced “some fantastic trade deals, good for both countries” and told Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel that China had agreed to buy soybeans and Boeing aircraft, before adding: “I sort of, I think it was a commitment. I mean, you know, it was sort of like a statement, but I think it was a commitment. It’s a great thing. It’s a lot of jobs.”

China has not commented on any promised purchases. It did warn that if the U.S. mishandles the question of Taiwan, a self-governing island Beijing claims, it could put the “entire relationship” between the U.S. and China in jeopardy, and that “the most important issue in China-U.S. relations” is Taiwan. The U.S. did not mention Taiwan in its own readout of the meeting.

Trump had stayed quiet on social media while in China, but once he left the country he had things to say. Somebody must have explained the meaning of Xi’s Thucydides Trap comment, but rather than taking offense, Trump on May 14 said Xi “was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct. Our Country suffered immeasurably with open borders, high taxes, transgender for everybody, men in women’s sports, DEI, horrible trade deals, rampant crime, and so much more!

“President Xi was not referring to the incredible rise that the United States has displayed to the world during the 16 spectacular months of the Trump Administration, which includes all-time high stock markets and 401K’s, military victory and thriving relationship in Venezuela, the military decimation of Iran (to be continued!)—Strongest military on earth by far, economic powerhouse again, with a record 18 trillion dollars being invested into the United States by others, best U.S. job market in history, with more people working in the United States right now than ever before, ending country destroying DEI, and so many other things that it would be impossible to readily list. In fact, President Xi congratulated me on so many tremendous successes in such a short period of time.

“Two years ago, we were, in fact, a Nation in decline. On that, I fully agree with President Xi! But now, the United States is the hottest Nation anywhere in the world, and hopefully our relationship with China will be stronger and better than ever before!”

At 4:52 this morning, Trump turned back to his plans for remodeling Washington, D.C. He announced that he intends to put his “NATIONAL GARDEN OF AMERICAN HEROES” in West Potomac Park. Then after claiming the people playing golf at his Doral club “are absolutely in love with” the 22-foot gold statue of him recently installed there, he posted above a picture of himself walking with Xi:

“China has a Ballroom, and so should the U.S.A.! It’s under construction, ahead of schedule, and will be the finest facility of its kind anywhere in the U.S.A. Thank you for all the support I have been given in getting this project going. Scheduled opening will be around September of 2028. The man I am walking with is President Xi, of China, one of the World’s Great Leaders! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Trump appears desperate to be included as an equal in the world of strongmen, apparently not understanding that America’s strength was always about its alliances.

Yesterday, members of Congress and Pentagon officials both were blindsided by the sudden decision by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to cancel the deployment of 4,000 troops to Poland after the troops were already on their way and much of the necessary equipment was already in Poland. Poland is a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally. The U.S. troops were going there as part of a nine-month rotation in which they would have trained with NATO allies.

Congress has tried to beef up the U.S. presence in Europe, warning that reductions would invite Russian aggression. Last year it passed a law limiting the number of troops Trump could withdraw from Europe and the circumstances under which he could do so.

Former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe Lieutenant General Ben Hodges told Paul McLeary and Jack Detsch of Politico that the Army’s role in Europe “is all about deterring the Russians, protecting America’s strategic interests and assuring allies. And now a very important asset that was coming to be part of that deterrence is gone.” Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) posted:

“Once again the President and Pete Hegseth show that they are not committed to security in Europe. Actions like this make us less safe and embolden [Russia’s president] Vladimir Putin. At every turn the two of them cower to Russia.”

European allies have worried for years now about Russian aggression. A signal that the U.S. is losing interest in NATO allies heightens that concern, especially coming, as it does, less than two weeks after Hegseth announced the U.S. will withdraw 5,000 troops from military bases in Germany following German chancellor Frederich Merz’s criticism of Trump’s handling of his war on Iran.

Today Connor O’Brien of Politico reported that the Republican chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services committees were surprised and angry at the news that Hegseth was recalling the troops from their deployment in Poland. At a hearing with Army officials—who said they had only been informed of the decision days ago—House Armed Services chair Mike Rogers (R-AL) said: “We don’t know what’s going on here, but I can just tell you we’re not happy with what’s being talked about, particularly since there’s been no statutory consultation with us.”

Committee member Don Bacon (R-NE) said the canceled deployment “is a slap in the face to Poland; it’s a slap in the face to our Baltic friends. It’s a slap to the face of this committee.”

But Trump seems more interested in acting like an autocrat than in consulting Congress, a body that his ally Steve Bannon has compared to the Duma, the Russian assembly that does what Putin tells it to. In addition to the extraordinary corruption already public, Bill Allison and Jess Menton of Bloomberg reported yesterday that a new financial filing shows that in the first quarter of 2026, Trump or his investment advisors made more than 3,700 trades—over 40 a day—“totaling tens of millions of dollars and involving major companies that have dealings with his administration.”

Allison and Menton note that Trump did not move his assets into a blind trust with an independent manager, as his predecessors did if they traded in stocks at all (former presidents Biden and Barack Obama did not). Instead, his sons Don Jr. and Eric manage the business as it operates in areas that are directly related to government policies decided by Trump himself. Trump invested in major companies with business affected by what he decided to do, including Nvidia, Intel Corp, Netflix, Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros Discovery, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon.

Wall Street executives told the journalists they were “baffled” by the high volume of trades and concerned about the appearance of conflicts of interest. “All of this raises questions that you’d rather not raise as a president,” wealth manager Matthew Tuttle told the reporters.

“So now people are asking why is he buying Nvidia and other companies now? When you’re the president you know everything, so any stock you buy, there’s a huge question mark.”

White House spokesperson David Ingle told the reporters that Trump “only acts in the best interests of the American public” and that “[t]here are no conflicts of interest.”