Trump and Xi Meet in Beijing on Trade, Taiwan and Chips

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Beijing to discuss trade commitments, semiconductor export controls and the status of Taiwan. The talks aim to turn an October 2025 trade truce into a more formal arrangement and address long-running tensions in economic and technology ties.

Negotiators discussed commerce commitments described as being at the “double-digit billion” level and proposals to create new governance bodies to manage bilateral trade. One proposal under consideration is a Board of Trade intended to create clearer frameworks for trade and investment between the United States and China.

Beijing made easing U.S. export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment a priority in the discussions. U.S. controls in recent years have limited the transfer of advanced chipmaking technology to China. Taiwan’s foundries produce more than 60% of the world’s semiconductors, and firms such as TSMC supply the most advanced chips currently available.

Delegates noted that changes in export rules or in cross-strait relations around Taiwan would have immediate effects on global chip production and hardware availability. Semiconductor manufacturing equipment and advanced fabrication processes are central to producing the chips used in a range of technologies.

Industry participants pointed to the dependence of digital-asset and blockchain infrastructure on advanced semiconductors. Bitcoin mining rigs use application-specific integrated circuits built on modern fabrication nodes. Ethereum validators and other nodes often run on high-performance graphics processors or specialized hardware. Machine learning tools used in on-chain analytics and automated trading also require powerful chips.

The proposed governance bodies, including the Board of Trade, were discussed as potential venues for addressing trade rules and regulatory coordination. Negotiators outlined that such bodies could cover trade, investment, technology cooperation and elements of cross-border digital-asset flows.

Talks also covered potential AI cooperation, including shared standards or frameworks for research and deployment. Delegates referenced decentralized compute networks, AI-driven trading protocols and machine learning tools that interact with blockchain systems as topics for bilateral discussion.

The summit represents a negotiated effort to formalize parts of the October 2025 truce and to create mechanisms for managing trade, technology and geopolitical issues tied to Taiwan. Officials and industry participants emphasized the technical links between export rules, chip supply chains and hardware used across crypto and AI applications.