Before arriving for his high-stakes summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, United States President Donald Trump aimed to set expectations high.He said he would urge Xi to “open up” China’s economy and announced a delegation of top business executives, including Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, to accompany him.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listAs Trump and Xi prepare to wrap up two days of meetings on Friday, the expectations among observers generally are modest at best.While Trump and Xi are anticipated to extend the one-year pause in their trade war agreed to in South Korea in October, the prevailing outlook is a stabilisation – not revitalisation – in ties between the world’s two largest economies, which are locked in a rivalry that spans everything from trade and artificial intelligence to the status of Taiwan.“It is important to be clear-eyed about the state of relations here,” Claire E Reade, a senior counsel at Arnold & Porter who previously worked on China at the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), told Al Jazeera.“China does not trust the US, and China wants to beat the US in what it sees as long-term global competition,” Reade said.“This limits what can be agreed.”While Trump and Xi have yet to announce the final contours of any trade agreement, the US side has flagged various busin …
