Trump burnt Xi last time. Today, he needs the Chinese president to save him

When Donald Trump meets China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, the most urgent item on their agenda will be ending the Iran war and letting ships pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump needs Xi’s help. Whether he gets it is an open question.

Put simply, China has leverage over Iran because it is the main buyer of Iranian energy exports. If China uses that leverage to press for normalisation of the strategic waterway, it will let Trump off the hook at a critical time in the US election cycle. Trump’s big tech donors want the Republican Party to win the November midterm elections so that he can push aside restrictions on artificial intelligence, data centres, and the hydrocarbons needed to power them. A win now, at the start of the data centre construction boom, would entrench their economic models and set them on a trajectory to long-term power. But the war in Iran is as unpopular today as the Iraq War in 2006, when violence soared, and the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, when public opposition was strongest.

The price of petrol in the US has soared by over 50 per cent since the war started on February 28. Diesel has risen even more. Trump is grasping at straws, talking about suspending federal taxes on petroleum. But suspending taxes requires an act of Congress – a big ask – and wouldn’t affect prices significantly because taxes are only about US18¢ a gallon (3.8 litres) for petrol and US24¢ a gallon for diesel. Joe Biden wanted to do this in 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed prices up. Congress resisted. He failed.

Although die-hard Republican voters remain supportive of the war – nearly 80 per cent say Trump’s attack was the right decision – 61 per cent of the electorate think it was a mistake. The president is under pressure from multiple sides: from donors alarmed by his sagging poll numbers at home to his Persian Gulf allies such as Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, which have lost billions of dollars in monthly revenue. A year ago, Trump’s visit to the region resulted in Qatar agreeing to spend $US96 billion on 210 US-made Boeing 787 Dreamliner and 777X aircraft powered by US-made GE Aerospace engines. Qatar is now under serious economic pressure, its natural gas exporting infrastructure badly damaged by Iranian attacks.

Trump can’t agree to Iran’s demands to lift the blockade, unfreeze frozen assets and ensure security for its allies in Lebanon. Iran calls its proposal “reasonable and generous”. Trump denounced it as a “piece of garbage”, saying Iran was “playing games” and “laughing at our now GREAT AGAIN Country. They will be laughing no longer!” These are impressive tantrums but that’s all Trump can muster for now. If he doesn’t get help from China, he will have to choose between restarting attacks on Iranian infrastructure and watering down his goals.

There are reasons to believe China wants an end to the twin blockades by Iran and the United States. The Middle East accounts for some 40 per cent of China’s oil imports. Getting that oil flowing again will help its slowing economy. Its per capita gross domestic product was less than one-third that of the US in 2024. Restarting oil flows will also help reduce prices around the world, allowing consumers more purchasing power. That would help China, the global leader in manufacturing with 28 per cent of the global total, more than the next three (Germany, Japan, and the US) combined.

However, Xi no doubt remembers what happened during Trump’s first term, when Trump went to China in November 2017. The Chinese side elevated the visit to an unprecedented status of “State Visit Plus”. It shut down the imperial palace complex of the Forbidden City, and put on Peking Opera performances and a state banquet, only to have Trump announce a trade war immediately afterwards. Trump imposed export controls on certain items, tariffs on $US200 billion in imports, and restrictions on companies such as Huawei. This is why Xi doesn’t trust Trump: he recognises that his US counterpart’s conviviality and rhetorical warmth are combined with ruthless economic aggression. Keeping the US bogged down in the Middle East means that it can’t turn its attention to China.

For these reasons, unless Trump moderates his demands, it is unlikely that he will return from Beijing with guarantees of an end to the Iran war. China may assuage him by agreeing to buy US soybeans, pork, beef and poultry, helping him secure votes from farmers in the battleground states. It may also agree to buy Boeing aircraft and US energy exports to reduce its trade surplus with the US. But opening the Strait of Hormuz? That may be a bridge too far.