During the trade truce between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in South Korea, experts debated which leader prevailed.
There is hardly any disagreement about the shifting power balance between the leaders, though.
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Xi and the US president had a much stronger bargaining position at their previous face-to-face meeting in 2019 and he left with some uncommon concessions, such as a partial rollback of technology-related export controls.
The Chinese leader appeared to emphasize their equality while Trump and Xi exchanged handshakes and niceties on the APEC summit’s side, drawing inspiration from two ship captains.
We should maintain the right course in the face of the current conditions, navigate through the challenging landscape, and ensure the giant ship’s forward momentum, according to Xi.
China believes it is “far, far closer to a peer now,” according to Dexter Roberts, a senior non-resident at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.
He told Al Jazeera, “I believe that China has definitely increased its stature while the US has definitely decreased.”
Beijing has strengthened the Chinese economy to better withstand US pressure and put additional pressure on it against Washington since Trump started his first trade war with China in 2018.
Beijing announced that businesses anywhere in the world would need approval to export goods containing even trace amounts of its rare-earth metals shortly after the Trump administration dramatically expanded the scope of its export blacklist to include thousands of Chinese subsidiaries last month.
Beijing’s willingness to use its effective stranglehold on the crucial minerals to defend its interests, which are essential for everything from smartphones to electric cars and fighter jets.
The restrictions had raised the possibility of a catastrophic disruption to global supply chains because China had a controlling interest in 90% of rare earth mining and 90% of separation and processing.
According to Gabriel Wildau, senior vice president at global business advisory firm Teneo, “Beijing’s ability to use export controls on rare earths as leverage has been decisive in shifting the balance of negotiating leverage.”
According to Wildau, “Beijing’s leverage over global supply chains will serve as a restraint on other governments that are considering imposing tariffs, export controls, or other coercive measures against China,” adding that it was unclear whether China “intends to go on the offensive.”
Prior to the summit, China had also significantly reduced its dependence on US agricultural products, particularly soya beans, which had also grown stronger.
Due to tit-for-trade disputes between Washington and Beijing, China had already been able to more than halve the share of American beans imported by turning to Brazil and Argentina by the end of May, when it stopped purchasing them.
Farmers in states across the midwestern US, including Iowa, Nebraska, and Indiana, were negatively impacted by China’s effective embargo, making them a political liability ahead of the midterm elections in 2026.
The Atlantic Council fellow Roberts claimed that China had figured out how to manipulate Trump’s “transactional nature and proclivity.”
According to Roberts, “I believe they figured out that Trump actually has some things in mind.”
And I believe that the US president gains legitimacy from negotiation, and that China is willing to do so if cooperating with the US is what they want.
He continued, “I believe they played this all very well to their advantage.”
The agreement largely restores the two countries’ relations to the status quo that existed prior to Trump’s crippling “liberation day” tariffs in April, while China is scheduled to resume purchases of US soybeans and postpone planned export controls on five of its 12 rare earths under the truce.
China benefits from a 20% to 10% reduction in his fentanyl-linked tariff, which is the only major concession that precedes Trump’s April trade war.
While China has bolstered its position over the past ten years, it was difficult to predict whether either superpower would have a clear advantage in their heated strategic conflict, according to Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.
The US was able to control technology more effectively the last time. The People’s Republic of China, or PRC, was then discovered a way to control rare earths, Chong told Al Jazeera.
“In the future, the US will change and discover something new. That is how things operate.
Some analysts in China are much less equivocal.
The power balance between China and the US has changed since Trump’s first term, according to Wang Wen, dean of the Renmin University of China in Beijing, and his trade war may now be deemed a failure.
Wang told Al Jazeera, “The US has to learn respect because of China’s strength.”



















