For many onlookers it was a detail easy to miss, but for those in the know it was a gesture filled with symbolism, and a sign of how much Donald Trump needs a win right now.
On a grey, windy afternoon at a military air base in Maryland, Trump waited patiently at the foot of the stairs to Xi Jinping’s plane. The President was about to grant his Chinese counterpart a rare honour.
On cue, Xi appeared at the door of the plane, holding hands with his wife, Peng Liyuan. Peering down at the military personnel lining a 100ft-long red carpet, he spotted the US President standing by with Melania. He smiled, clearly pleased, and gave a little wave.
There followed plenty of handshakes, more smiles, flowers presented by children, some friendly chats and the two countries’ national anthems. Cannons fired and B-1 bombers screeched overhead, causing Trump to wince, then chuckle.
Xi is used to pageantry. But he would have been especially happy with the presence of Trump, and what it signified on his first visit to America in a decade.
Was it weakness, strategy, desperation or canny politics in search of a trade deal? Whatever the implications, it was clearly intended to send a message: Trump was very glad Xi was here, and keen to make him feel welcome.
It was also a move that was bound to frustrate some of Trump’s Maga allies.
A historic gesture from Trump
When leaders of great powers meet, it is usually replete with diplomatic power plays. World leaders coming to the US usually land to a grand, formal reception, but their counterpart stays at the White House. This make the visitor then come to the centre of American power before being granted an audience with the President.
US military personnel unroll the red carpet at the bottom of the stairs of an Air China plane carrying Chinese President Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on 23 September (Photo: Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images)When King Charles visited in April, the King and Queen were greeted at the air base by the UK ambassador, flowers and a military cordon of honour, but made their own way to the White House.
This isn’t a one-way street. When Trump flew to Beijing in May, Xi did not greet him at the airport.
There have been some exceptions over the decades. Ronald Reagan, George W Bush and Barack Obama went to meet visiting popes at the airport – call it a divine exception. Trump also greeted Vladimir Putin on the tarmac at Anchorage in Alaska last year, ahead of their summit over Ukraine. Nixon did the same for Japanese Emperor Hirohito at the same venue in 1971.
But popes aside, you need to rewind to 1962 for the last time a US president made the short hop down to Joint Base Andrews to honour the arrival of a head of state in Washington.
Back then, President John F Kennedy met British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan at the airport and gave him a lift back to the White House in his helicopter, to begin a weekend of conferences to discuss major world issues such as Cold War negotiations with Nikita Khrushchev as Russia resumed nuclear testing.
Stakes are high in Washington
The last time Xi visited the US was early in Trump’s first term, in 2017, when he came to Mar-a-Lago in Florida. This is the third time the men have met in the last year.
And the stakes are high. Both leaders hope to cool their tit-for-tat tariff war, which saw China’s trade with the US fall by 25 per cent last year. Beijing also hopes Trump will keep his finger on the pause button of a $14bn (£10.5bn) arms deal with Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the US wants China to dial back its support for Iran in terms of oil purchases and weapon sales.
The stakes are high for both Donald Trump and Xi Jinping during their first meeting in Washington in a decade (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)Both leaders also need to thrash out where they stand on AI, which poses increasing security risks and economic opportunities, with the US still holding out on providing its competitor with the latest silicon chips that power the frontier models.
Trump said on Wednesday that the state dinner with Xi the following day would be a “packed house… everybody wanted to be there. I would say we have the entire tech world, the entire banking world and a lot more”.
Rina Shah, a former Republican staffer and now political strategist, told LBC that the “choreography” of the welcome showed that Beijing wants equality and “Washington wants a deal”.
“Both men need a picture that says ‘we can manage the rivalry’,” she added. “This is not a reset, it is damage control. The two biggest economies on Earth cannot keep lurching from tariff spike to tariff spike and then from AI scare to AI scare.”
However, not everyone was happy.
Four Republican lawmakers, including former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, wrote to the Trump administration expressing concerns over its failure to move ahead with $300m (£226m) in foreign military financing that Congress appropriated for Taiwan, and the administration’s decision to withhold approval for a $14bn package of foreign military sales to the island.
Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based Republican strategist, told Politico that Xi’s state visit would annoy many Maga loyalists, just a month before the US midterm elections.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan step off their plane upon arrival at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)“The in-your-face arguments from Republicans this election cycle is that Democrats want to bring socialism or communism to America,” Marson said. “Trump warmly embracing two of the most outspoken leaders of those ideologies [Xi Jinping and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani] makes it that much harder for the message to resonate with voters.”
Republican Senator Ted Budd said that Trump “can’t forget that China is also a competitor and an adversary”.
Meanwhile, Roger Wicker, a Republican senator from Mississippi, said that had he been asked for advice, he would have told Trump not to invite Xi to Washington for “such a lavish welcome, based on all of the troubling issues we have with President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party”.
The usually staunch Trump loyalist did not hold back. “Perhaps some progress will be made,” he said. “But … during every minute of dialogue, our commander-in-chief should keep in mind that his guest is a brutal, unelected and oppressive dictator who seeks to dominate his neighbours and whose massive military arsenal is aimed directly at the United States of America.”
For Trump, the challenge will be to convince his base that any agreement that comes out of his summit with Xi is a win for the US – and one that he can tout ahead of voters going to the polls in early November.
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