Time: “He may have descended Air Force One late Wednesday to the cheers of schoolchildren brandishing the Stars and Stripes, and flanked by tech’s most influential tycoons, but it didn’t take long for President Trump to be put in his place in Beijing. In the first closed-door discussions of the visit, Chinese President Xi Jinping issued a stinging rebuke regarding American arms sales to Taiwan…”

“Given that Trump explodes at even the most trifling perceived affront… it was telling that Xi felt empowered to lay down the law from the get-go… the optics of the U.S. President, for whom belligerence has long been a badge of honor, appearing awkward and cowed is a stark illustration of the shifting balance of global power.”

“More than anything, Trump looked strangely alone despite the phalanx of top executives traveling with him… Xi’s choice of words was again telling. China is never shy about trumpeting its ‘partnerships’ of various degrees with scores of nations across the planet, even if in truth these are never evenhanded and exclusively transactional.”

“But with Trump, Xi eschewed any semblance of partnership, merely advocated a framework of ‘constructive strategic stability,’ indicating he’s settled that the U.S. is a rival and, while not wanting ties to spiral, is confident in China’s ability to hold its own…”

“As a parting gesture to Donald Trump before he left China, Xi Jinping promised to send some rose seeds to the White House to be planted at the seat of the American presidency,” the Financial Times reports. 

“But over two days of talks in Beijing — spanning the Temple of Heaven, the Great Hall of the People and, finally, the gardens of the Chinese leadership’s tightly guarded compound — Xi appeared to concede little else to the US president.”

“Their discussions yielded no clear breakthroughs on the big foreign policy and economic fissures between the two countries and fell short of delivering the sort of big business deals the White House covets from international summits”

Bloomberg: “To Fidel Castro and Cuba’s communist elite, private businesses were totems of capitalist evil.”

“Now, with the country running out of food and fuel, the regime on the brink and anger spreading in the streets, it’s those private businesses — run by once-persecuted, small-scale capitalists — that hold the key to salvaging what’s left of Cuba’s economy.”

President Trump took questions on Air Force One:

REPORTER: Did you talk to Xi about the cyber attacks that he’s done in the United States?

TRUMP: I did. And he talked about attacks we did in China. You know, what they do, we do too. We spy like hell on them too. I told him, “We do a lot of stuff to you that that you don’t know about.”

“President Donald Trump said he’s weighing whether to ease sanctions on Chinese oil companies that buy supplies from Iran, a move that would mark a concession to Beijing after his summit with President Xi Jinping,” Bloomberg reports. 

“President Donald Trump said Friday that he refused to directly answer Chinese President Xi Jinping when asked if the United States would defend Taiwan if China attacked it,” CNBC reports. 

Said Trump: “That question was asked to me today by President Xi. I said I don’t talk about that.”

New York Times: “China is at odds with the United States on many issues, but it pulled out all the stops when President Trump arrived in Beijing for a state visit, with extravagant receptions, a state banquet and rarefied access to the compound where China’s leaders live and work.”

“China does not always put on the same level of ceremony for every visiting world leader. Visits by U.S. presidents are major, high-stakes events. Chinese officials described Mr. Trump’s last visit, in 2017, as a ‘state visit plus.'”

“German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that he wouldn’t recommend his children go to live in the U.S. because of what he described as a ‘social climate’ that has suddenly taken hold,” Bloomberg reports.

Said Merz: “I’m a great admirer of America — my admiration is not increasing at the moment. I would not recommend my children today go to the US to be trained or to work there.”