President Donald J. Trump arrived back in the United States of America on the 15th of May 2026 after a three-day state visit to China. Isaac Arnsdorf, Michael Birnbaum, and Michelle Ye Hee Lee of the Washington Post note that the summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping yielded “exactly what Xi aimed to achieve with the visit.” Its pageantry and Trump’s gestures of friendship and admiration showed the U.S. and China as peers, something previous U.S. leaders have rejected.

In an interview with Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity that aired today, Trump said : “It’s the two great countries. I call it the G-2. This is the G-2. I think it’ll go down as a very important moment in history.”

Former China director on the National Security Council Julian Gewirtz, who served under President Joe Biden, told the Washington Post reporters : “Xi has done something Chinese leaders have been working toward for decades—bringing an American president to Beijing as an undisputed peer. Xi used the opulent optics of the visit to make clear to the world that China and the United States are the two dominant, equally matched superpowers. There is no going back.”

Xi has said before he thinks “the East is rising and the West declining.” Referring to that idea Thursday, before the two leaders met in Beijing, Xi made it clear he sees the U.S. as a declining power and pondered, “Can China and the United States overcome the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and create a new paradigm of major country relations ?”

The Thucydides Trap is a theory, put forward by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison, that when a rising power threatens to replace an existing power, the conflict between the two tends to spark a war.

As if to illustrate that the U.S. is a declining power, the Chinese media downplayed the importance of a visit from a U.S. president. As James Palmer of Foreign Policy noted, on the day President Donald Trump arrived, the main story on the front page of the state-run English-language newspaper China Daily was the visit of the president of Tajikistan the day before. The Chinese Communist Party newspaper featured Trump’s visit on page 3.

President Donald Trump seemed to miss the larger context of the honors he so clearly enjoyed, telling the Fox News Channel’s Brett Baier that the summit was a success and that the most significant win for the United States was “relationship. It’s all about relationship. I have a very good relationship with President Xi and with China. And it sounds like something that doesn’t mean anything, but it’s everything in dealmaking and problems we’ve solved. The two of us have solved a lot of problems between— that somebody else would have maybe done very badly with. We’ve solved a lot of problems over the years.”

Tamara Keith and Jennifer Pak of NPR noted that Xi did not return Trump’s personal praise, speaking instead about relations between the U.S. and China.

Keith and Pak also reported that President Donald Trump boasted the visit had produced “some fantastic trade deals, good for both countries” and told Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel that China had agreed to buy soybeans and Boeing aircraft, before adding : “I sort of, I think it was a commitment. I mean, you know, it was sort of like a statement, but I think it was a commitment. It’s a great thing. It’s a lot of jobs.”

China has not commented on any promised purchases. It did warn that if the U.S. mishandles the question of Taiwan, a self-governing island Beijing claims, it could put the “entire relationship” between the U.S. and China in jeopardy, and that “the most important issue in China-U.S. relations” is Taiwan. The U.S. did not mention Taiwan in its own readout of the meeting.

President Donald Trump had stayed quiet on social media while in China, but once he left the country he had things to say. Somebody must have explained the meaning of Xi’s Thucydides Trap comment, but rather than taking offense, President Donald Trump on May 14 said Xi “was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct. Our Country suffered immeasurably with open borders, high taxes, transgender for everybody, men in women’s sports, DEI, horrible trade deals, rampant crime, and so much more !

“President Xi was not referring to the incredible rise that the United States has displayed to the world during the 16 spectacular months of the Trump Administration, which includes all-time high stock markets and 401K’s, military victory and thriving relationship in Venezuela, the military decimation of Iran (to be continued !)—Strongest military on earth by far, economic powerhouse again, with a record 18 trillion dollars being invested into the United States by others, best U.S. job market in history, with more people working in the United States right now than ever before, ending country destroying DEI, and so many other things that it would be impossible to readily list. In fact, President Xi congratulated me on so many tremendous successes in such a short period of time.

“Two years ago, we were, in fact, a Nation in decline. On that, I fully agree with President Xi ! But now, the United States is the hottest Nation anywhere in the world, and hopefully our relationship with China will be stronger and better than ever before !”

At 4 :52 on the 16th of May 2026 morning, Trump turned back to his plans for remodeling Washington, D.C. He announced that he intends to put his “NATIONAL GARDEN OF AMERICAN HEROES” in West Potomac Park, then after claiming that the people playing golf at his Doral club “are absolutely in love with” the 22-foot gold statue of him recently installed there, posted above a picture of himself walking with Xi :

“China has a Ballroom, and so should the U.S.A. ! It’s under construction, ahead of schedule, and will be the finest facility of its kind anywhere in the U.S.A. Thank you for all the support I have been given in getting this project going. Scheduled opening will be around September of 2028. The man I am walking with is President Xi, of China, one of the World’s Great Leaders ! President DONALD J. TRUMP”