By Michael Martina, David Brunnstrom, David Lauder, and Mi Mi Chu

WASHINGTON/BEIJING, May 16 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing last week may have yielded only modest results by the standards of U.S.-China summits, but it highlighted a clear benefit for China. After the height of last year's trade war, the two countries have returned to their usual state of economic and strategic confrontation.

The two days of talks between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping confirmed that even after Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs and the trade truce reached by the two sides late last year, Washington and Beijing are still embroiled in the conflict that Trump inherited upon his return to the White House.

For the United States, this means that the most serious issues in the relationship remain unresolved, particularly what Washington describes as Beijing’s protectionist and monopolistic policies, as well as its moves to expand its military influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

For Xi, this provides a reprieve and space to return to living with a largely predictable set of challenges. He appeared to describe this shift last week as a new framework for relations between the two countries, which he termed "constructive strategic stability."

* A truce in the trade war

Scott Kennedy, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that China emerged victorious given the Trump administration's retreat from its aggressive approach to trade since early 2025.

He explained, "Compared to where we were a year ago, when tariffs were at 145 percent and the United States was striving to push China and the rest of the world into radical change, we have seen a counter-revolution and returned to stability."

Trump brought some of the most powerful executives in the United States to the summit on Thursday and Friday, from Elon Musk of Tesla to Jensen Huang of Nvidia, but most of them accomplished little during their time there, except for attending a lavish banquet.

The summit also failed to produce a public commitment from China to help the United States end the war in Iran, which has stirred up turmoil in global markets and negatively impacted Trump's popularity.

Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said, "The summit showed stability, but it maintained the status quo... and produced modest results that the markets can absorb and manage, which is all the US-China relationship can tolerate at the moment."

In response to a request for comment, a White House official said, "President Trump has leveraged his positive relationship with Chinese President Xi to achieve tangible gains for the American people," citing the Boeing aircraft sale deal and agricultural agreements to expand U.S. exports.

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington described the meetings between Xi and Trump as "frank, in-depth, constructive and strategic," adding that they "explored the best ways for the two great countries to cooperate with each other."

Analysts say that, in the context of the trade war that erupted last year, Trump appears to have overestimated the power of tariffs to force China to make unilateral concessions.

Beijing responded by raising its own tariffs and threatening to cut off supplies of vital minerals needed by U.S. industries, leading to a tense standoff.

Since then, the White House has shown an unwillingness to bear the economic consequences that might result from applying other forms of American financial and technological influence, such as imposing sanctions on major Chinese banks.

Reflecting the change in tone, several long-standing U.S. demands, such as China’s handling of excess industrial capacity, which its trading partners say is unfairly flooding their markets with low-cost goods, were not publicly mentioned last week.

China appears content with the fragile truce as it deals with a weak domestic economy and seeks to bolster technologies that it hopes will tip the scales in its decades-long rivalry with the United States.

Senior Trump administration officials downplayed the importance of seeking major results even in the run-up to the meeting, saying there was no need to rush to extend the trade truce, which expires in five months, that the two leaders reached after talks in South Korea in October.

* "Far below expectations"

A source familiar with the trade negotiations said that China wanted a longer extension of the truce than the Trump administration was prepared to grant, along with assurances regarding ongoing U.S. investigations that are likely to reinstate some of the tariffs on U.S. imports that were struck down by the Supreme Court this year.

The source told Reuters that the two sides did not put much on the table at the summit, adding that some trade deals might be postponed until the fall, when Xi makes a similar visit to the White House.

The source requested anonymity in order to speak frankly about the negotiations.

The summit's business results were limited compared to Trump's visit to China in 2017, when companies accompanying him signed deals and memoranda of understanding worth $250 billion.

Last week’s meeting failed to produce a breakthrough on the sale of Nvidia’s advanced H200 artificial intelligence chips to China, which may be a relief to China hardliners among Republicans and Democrats in Washington, who have warned the US administration against supporting China’s AI development efforts.

Although it has not yet been confirmed, Trump said that Boeing had struck a deal under which China would buy 200 aircraft, a number far lower than the 500 that had been expected, and the 300 that Beijing had agreed to buy during the 2017 visit.

A White House official said the United States has created a new trade council, which U.S. officials have described as a joint mechanism for reducing tariffs on non-sensitive goods, but the official did not provide many details.

Wendy Cutler, who previously served as acting deputy U.S. trade representative, described the economic gains as "far below expectations."

Choi Shujun, a professor of international affairs at Renmin University in Beijing, said the meetings represented a positive step for China toward realistic competition.

He added that the summit showed that Washington and Beijing "no longer aspire to restore Sino-American relations to a golden age of cooperation, but instead acknowledge the long-term nature of competition and conflict."