President Trump departed Beijing on Friday, touting trade deals to sell American-made airplanes, farm goods and other products, the signature outcome of his two-day summit with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader.
Mr. Trump and his advisers said China had agreed to buy 200 Boeing airplanes, with the possibility to sell more, and more than $10 billion worth of agricultural products, as well as energy and medical devices. But few details were released, and Chinese officials said little publicly about the commitments.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Mr. Trump claimed that the two sides did not discuss U.S. tariffs on imports from China. He said that the two sides had discussed sales of advanced chips made by companies like Nvidia, and that the countries would be “doing a lot of trade.”
“Our farmers are going to be very happy,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s visit this week, his first in nearly a decade, was closely watched as a pivotal moment for U.S.-China relations. The two countries are geopolitical rivals, yet remain deeply tied through one of the world’s most profitable trading relationships, with hundreds of billions of dollars in goods and services changing hands each year.
Mr. Trump has long criticized what he calls unfair Chinese trade practices, pressing Beijing to buy more American goods while signaling openness to Chinese investment. But even if Beijing signs off on deals that allow Mr. Trump to claim victory and reinforce his reputation as a deal maker, they are unlikely to alter the trajectory of an increasingly adversarial relationship.
Still, Mr. Trump projected optimism about both the relationship and the agreements reached during the visit. Over tea with Mr. Xi in a Beijing garden on Friday, Mr. Trump called it “an incredible visit.”
“I think a lot of good has come of it,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ve made some fantastic trade deals, really for both countries.”
Chinese officials struck a more cautious tone. Asked whether China had agreed to buy more Boeing airplanes or American agricultural products, Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, would not confirm any details. He said Beijing was willing to work with the United States “to implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state.”
A Boeing official referred a request for comment to the White House.
Stephen Olson, a former American trade negotiator, said that “no major breakthroughs were expected and none were achieved, but both countries got what they needed from this summit: a bit of additional stability.”
Both sides had achieved their goals. Mr. Trump emerged with deals he could tout as economic “wins,” while Mr. Xi used the meeting to present China “as a full peer competitor to the United States, a country that does not need to bend the knee to U.S. demands,” Mr. Olson said.
U.S. officials said Friday they would begin establishing a new “Board of Trade” to oversee the business, an arrangement that would entail both countries cutting tariffs on about $30 billion in products.
Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, said in an interview with Bloomberg News Friday that the administration was trying to steer trade with China toward “the kinds of things we want to be selling.”
Mr. Greer said he expected China to agree to purchase more American agricultural products, in addition to an existing three-year deal to buy 25 million metric tons of soybeans annually. Beijing also renewed export licenses for some U.S. slaughterhouses to sell American beef in China.
Many U.S. lawmakers and officials, including Mr. Greer, have urged that trade with China focus on less sensitive sectors that would not advance China’s technological or military capabilities.
“We’re already seeing them start to fulfill some of their promises,” Mr. Greer said.
Officials have not specified what, if any, concessions the United States had offered in return for the promised purchases. Asked whether the Trump administration could still raise tariffs on China, Mr. Greer said that the two sides had agreed there would be “a certain level of tariff,” though he declined to elaborate.
To replace the global tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court in February, the Trump administration has launched two trade investigations expected to result in new tariffs on China and dozens of other countries this summer.
“The Chinese are going to be looking at what we’re doing there compared to agreements we’ve had in the past on certain tariff levels and we’ll just have to try to manage that,” Mr. Greer said.
He added that both sides seemed willing to extend an agreement on rare earths, which ensures continued Chinese exports of the minerals and expires later this year.
Mr. Greer also said new Chinese regulations allowing the government to penalize foreign companies for moving their supply chains out of China were a “strong concern” for him. “We’re trying to manage differences rather than escalate them,” he said.
Mr. Trump did not clarify Friday exactly what the countries had discussed about the fate of Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips. When Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, joined the group of American business leaders traveling to Beijing at the last minute earlier this week, it sparked speculation that progress could be in store for the company’s long-stalled sales in China.
Although Mr. Trump last December greenlit the sale to China of one of Nvidia’s most powerful chips, the H200, the Chinese government has not approved any sales since then. Instead, Beijing has encouraged Chinese tech companies to buy chips made at home by companies like Huawei.
Mr. Greer said earlier on Friday that the decision to buy the chips would be “a sovereign decision for China.” On Air Force One, Mr. Trump said that the issue “did come up, and I think something could happen with that.”
Meaghan Tobin contributed reporting.
