Iran focus at Trump-Xi summit may delay progress on tariffs and rare earths

When President Donald Trump meets Xi Jinping in Beijing next week, the dominant item on the agenda will be the Iran war, not the economy. The White House has framed the visit primarily as an effort to enlist Beijing's leverage over Tehran in pushing toward a durable ceasefire.

Consultancies and Wall Street strategists say that prioritisation is unsettling US business. Reciprocal tariff rollbacks, China's tight rare-earth export licensing regime and technology sanctions are all expected to come away from the summit without a hard decision. Eaton Vance and other fund managers have publicly shifted to a base case in which the trade file simply stalls.

Trump is travelling with a slimmed-down CEO delegation, including the heads of Boeing and Citigroup. Beijing, in exchange for help cooling tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, may push for US concessions on Taiwan and semiconductor controls. The summit's concrete output will steer the direction of tariff- and tech-exposed equities in the coming days.