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We map how the language of communication, and the larger relationship, has changed over a decade.China\u2019s President Xi Jinping looks on as United States President Donald Trump remarks during an arrival ceremony at the White House in Washington, DC, on September 24, 2026 [Annabelle Gordon/EPA via Pool]How has Trump talked about China in the past?Here are some examples of how Trump addressed Xi and China.\u2018Cheating\u2019: August 2012On Twitter, now X, Trump posted: \u201cNo surprise that China was caught cheating in the Olympics. That\u2019s the Chinese M.O. \u2013 Lie, Cheat & Steal in all international dealings.\u201d\u2018Take them to McDonald\u2019s\u2019: July 2015Trump said at a campaign event in South Carolina: \u201cYou can win against China if you\u2019re smart. But our people don\u2019t have a clue. We give state dinners to the heads of China. I said, why are you doing state dinners for them? They\u2019re ripping us left and right. Just take them to McDonald\u2019s and go back to the negotiating table.\u201d\u2018Enemy\u2019: 2015In his book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, Trump wrote: \u201cThere are people who wish I wouldn\u2019t refer to China as our enemy. But that\u2019s exactly what they are. They have destroyed entire industries by utilizing low-wage workers, cost us tens of thousands of jobs, spied on our businesses, stolen our technology, and have manipulated and devalued their currency, which makes importing our goods more expensive \u2013 and sometimes, impossible.\u201d\u2018Rape our country\u2019: May 2016At an election campaign rally in Indiana, Trump stated: \u201cWe can\u2019t continue to allow China to rape our country and that\u2019s what they\u2019re doing. It\u2019s the greatest theft in the history of the world.\u201d\u2018Ripped us off\u2019: September 2020At a Labor Day news conference at the White House, President Trump stated: \u201c \u2026 there\u2019s been no country anywhere, at any time, that\u2019s ripped us off like China has. We\u2019ve lost billions and billions and billions of dollars by dealing with China. And they take that money, and they build their military.\u201d\u2018Screw the USA\u2019: April 2025Speaking with reporters amid the escalating US-China trade war, President Trump said: I don\u2019t blame China at all [for the US losing billions of dollars in trade with Beijing]. I don\u2019t blame President Xi. I like him. He likes me. Who knows? Who the hell cares, frankly. \u2026 I don\u2019t blame China. I don\u2019t blame Vietnam. I don\u2019t \u2013 I see they\u2019re meeting today. Isn\u2019t \u2013 that\u2019s a lovely meeting. They\u2019re meeting, like, trying to figure out, \u201cHow do we screw the United States of America?\u201dUS President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping during a state arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on September 24, 2026 [Evan Vucci/Reuters]Why has Trump changed his tune now?\u201cGreat gentleman.\u201d\u201cVery good trading relationship.\u201d\u201cTruly great friendship.\u201dThose are just a few of the phrases Trump has used this week to describe Xi and Beijing.This week\u2019s state visit was the first by a Chinese leader to the US in 11 years. But it is also the third time in less than a year that Trump and Xi have met face to face, as the two powers remain uneasily gridlocked in competition over the development of AI, access to rare-earth metals, the question of Taiwan, and the Iran war.Overhanging it all is the paused, but simmering, trade war between two nations.Early into his second term at the White House, Trump upped tariffs on Chinese goods as he accused China of facilitating the flow of fentanyl, a deadly drug, to the US. Beijing responded with its own levies and restricted exports of valuable rare-earth metals, crucial for the development and manufacture of everything high-tech, from smartphones to fighter jets.At its peak, tariffs headed towards 150 percent by each side before being paused to allow time for talks in October last year.But nearly a year since the two sides called that temporary truce, the US position is not as strong as China\u2019s, analysts say.Trading deficitFirst, despite Trump\u2019s ambition of reducing trade deficits with other countries via his campaign of tariffs, the gap between China and the US has widened \u2013 and not in favour of the US.Washington\u2019s overall trade deficit has remained stagnant and, in fact, risen in some quarters. Between May and July 2025, the US recorded a combined goods trade deficit of about $277bn, according to Census Bureau data. In the same period in 2026, the deficit reached $325bn, an increase of 17.4 percent.Meanwhile, Beijing has been minting profits. China\u2019s total goods exports rose 6.1 percent in 2025, reaching about $3.77 trillion, according to its National Bureau of Statistics. Until August this year, China had a goods trade surplus of about $820bn \u2013 already approaching the mammoth 2025 full-year surplus of roughly $1.2 trillion.The equation is such that US-China\u2019s bilateral trade has been in a near free-fall over the last two years, just as the US national debt hit a record $40bn this year \u2013 two years ahead of expectations.\u201cWashington is playing a high-stakes game of economic chicken with a $40 trillion debt load, an inflationary sword of Damocles, zero fiscal cushion to absorb a truce collapse and a dependence [on] Chinese industrial and manufacturing inputs,\u201d Beijing-based Einar Tangen, a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation, told Al Jazeera.US consumers and the economy in general will find it tough to survive yet another inflationary shock from renewed tariffs \u201cat a time when the federal budget already operates like a high-wire Ponzi scheme,\u201d he added.Trump simply can\u2019t afford for the trade truce to collapse now.Rare earth mineralsSecond is China\u2019s ace card of rare earth metals. These are crucial for the development of AI and defence sectors as they are used in the manufacture of all things tech, from smartphones to fighter jets. China has 60 percent of the world\u2019s known deposits of these minerals, and processes 90 percent of them. During the trade war last year, China restricted exports of seven of the 12 it has in April, and threatened to restrict five more before the truce delayed that.China, therefore, has huge leverage and Trump has little choice but to play nice, observers say.What are the main outcomes from the Xi-Trump summit?The bottom line is that the meeting in Washington showcased the two nations\u2019 potential for bilateral relations rather than any grand bargain in the making. While the trade truce was extended, major strategic disputes like the question of Taiwan, the war on Iran, as well as tensions over trade and technology remain unresolved.Trade truce extended: The US and China agreed to extend their existing trade truce, which had been due to expire in November, giving negotiators more time to work towards a broader agreement. The extension now runs to January 10.No breakthrough on Iran: Trump had wanted Beijing to use its influence with Tehran to help isolate Iran economically and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. No breakthrough was reported.Taiwan remains unresolved: Xi urged Trump to oppose Taiwanese independence and handle the Taiwan issue \u201cprudently\u201d, China\u2019s Xinhua news agency reported. The White House has not commented on it so far; however, a second, $14bn arms deal between the US and Taiwan, following an $11bn sale announced in December last year, remains on hold.Push for stable relations: Both leaders signalled a desire to prevent further deterioration in ties. Xi called for competition to remain \u201cwithin bounds\u201d and warned against the \u201cThucydides Trap\u201d of conflict between a rising and established power.AI race: In advance of the talks, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Washington had proposed an AI \u201cnotification mechanism\u201d with China \u2013 in effect, a hotline to alert each other when AI incidents threaten national security." ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790330680.132391", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-25T13:24:15.062011+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/25/from-cheats-to-great-friendship-how-trumps-rhetoric-on-china-changed?traffic_source=rss" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-25T13:24:15.054307+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "From \u2018cheats\u2019 to \u2018great friendship\u2019: How Trump\u2019s rhetoric on China changed | International Trade News | Al Jazeera", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790330680.132391", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-25T13:24:15.020084+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--reject=js,mjs,woff,woff2,ttf,otf,eot,mp4,m4v,mov,webm,ogv,mkv,avi,flv", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "--timestamping", "https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/25/from-cheats-to-great-friendship-how-trumps-rhetoric-on-china-changed?traffic_source=rss" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-09-25T13:24:15.010709+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/25/from-cheats-to-great-friendship-how-trumps-rhetoric-on-china-changed@traffic_source=rss.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790330680.132391", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-25T13:24:09.484126+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "From \u2018cheats\u2019 to \u2018great friendship\u2019: How Trump\u2019s rhetoric on China changed | International Trade News | Al Jazeera", "warc": null, "wget": "www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/25/from-cheats-to-great-friendship-how-trumps-rhetoric-on-china-changed@traffic_source=rss.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1790330680.132391", "newest_archive_date": "2026-09-25T13:24:16.759545+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 6, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-09-25T13:24:08.420693+00:00", "path": "/news/2026/9/25/from-cheats-to-great-friendship-how-trumps-rhetoric-on-china-changed", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "4c5e63da-5fb8-42fc-a61f-355fb6cacdf7", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1790330680-import.txt" ], "tags": ",world_news,pool,war-wiki", "tags_str": "world_news,pool,war-wiki", "timestamp": "1790330680.132391", "title": "From \u2018cheats\u2019 to \u2018great friendship\u2019: How Trump\u2019s rhetoric on China changed | International Trade News | Al Jazeera", "updated": "2026-09-25T13:24:08.420484+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-09-25 13:24", "url": "https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/25/from-cheats-to-great-friendship-how-trumps-rhetoric-on-china-changed?traffic_source=rss" }