Why are American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, others U.S. carriers opposing China President Xi Jinping's idea of adding more direct flights between two countries?

Head of industry group Airlines for America have claimed that carriers oppose adding more Chinese direct flights to the United States even as China's president Xi Jinping raised the idea. Chris Sununu, who heads the group representing American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and others, said U.S. carriers continued to be hampered by the fact that Chinese carriers are allowed to overfly Russia on eight flights.

He said he has been advocating to Trump administration officials not to give in. "It's not just a minor thing. It's a huge cost to the airlines to have to go around Russia," Sununu said in an interview.

US President Donald Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to the White House on Thursday, with talks on trade and artificial intelligence and the growing strategic rivalry between the countries all in the spotlight during an elaborate state visit.


US-China Trade Deal

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two sides had extended a trade truce that was due to expire in November during talks, but only by two months. He said the extension would give the two sides "more time to see what we can do on the economic front."

But rather than locking in a durable agreement, the extension appears to push the central questions — tariffs, Chinese purchases, rare-earth supplies and technology restrictions — into the next round of negotiations.

Bessent said on Wednesday that Beijing was meeting its requirement in the earlier agreement to buy 25 million tons of soybeans but was lagging on its pledge to buy $17 billion in other agricultural goods. US officials have said rare-earth deliveries were also falling short, another sign that significant gaps remain.

For companies, the result is a familiar form of instability: tariff rates remain lower for now, but decisions must still be made against a shifting policy backdrop.

Trump and Xi could have more opportunities to hammer out a more permanent deal ahead of the new January 10 deadline, with two multilateral summits scheduled in Shenzhen and Miami before the end of the year.

Taiwan Issue

As expected, Xi pressed Trump on the Taiwan issue, saying, according to China's official news agency Xinhua, that China hoped the United States would "handle the Taiwan question with prudence to lay a solid foundation for bilateral strategic cooperation and the development of China-US ties."

The agency's English-language service also wrote that Xi hoped the US would oppose Taiwan independence.

That would be a tougher version of Washington's long-standing formulation that it does not "support" independence. There are no signs that the Trump administration plans to change its wording.

There was no immediate White House readout of the exchange, but US officials have long avoided explicitly stating opposition to Taiwanese independence. Any shift in language would raise questions about Washington's resolve to defend the island and provoke opposition in Congress.

Washington is Taiwan's most important international backer and is bound by US law to provide it with the means to defend itself.

Trump raised questions about that commitment after his summit with Xi in May when he described a pending arms package for Taiwan worth up to $14 billion as a "negotiating chip."

Thucydides Trap

Xi, not for the first time while meeting Trump, invoked the "Thucydides Trap", an academic theory that competition between a rising power and an established one tends toward war.

While the Chinese leader said the risk "can be overcome," his reference underscored the extent to which concerns about a potential US-China military conflict continue to shadow relations between the world's two largest powers.

Xi argued that both nations stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation, and he called for regular military dialogue and stronger crisis-prevention mechanisms.

Trump, for his part, drew on the two nations' shared history to emphasize the potential for cooperation. They could accomplish much by pursuing common interests, he said, invoking their wartime alliance against Japan.

Donald Trump Plays Host

For Trump, Xi's White House visit was an opportunity to show off a Washington being remade in his image.

After Xi treated Trump in Beijing to a tour around a Ming dynasty temple and a walled-off garden retreat rarely opened to foreigners, the US president returned the favor with a different kind of spectacle: Troops wearing wigs and tri-corner hats marched in formation and played music in a Rose Garden redesigned to look like a Trump golf club.

Fighter jets and bombers roared overhead during ceremonies staged on Wednesday and Thursday, one so loud it caused Trump to flinch.

Trump has talked for months about needing more authority, often over the objection of courts and the US Congress, to beautify and remodel the nation’s capital ahead of Xi's visit, although many of the projects, like the new White House ballroom and the Reflecting Pool, are not yet finished or have run into problems.

When the White House press corps was called to cover the two leaders, it wasn’t to hear them talk about the weighty affairs of state. Instead, it was to watch them tour the Marine One helicopter and the recently redesigned South Lawn of the White House, replete with a large helipad emblazoned with the presidential seal.