Before the soup was served at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday evening, Donald Trump handed Xi Jinping a bronze sculpture of a bald eagle — a bird, Trump noted, that "embodies the free and soaring spirit of America." It was a carefully choreographed moment of warmth between two men whose governments had spent the previous months locked in a tariff war that has rattled supply chains from Shenzhen to Chicago. Trump opened the dinner by praising what he described as an unusually strong personal bond between the two leaders, telling guests, "We've never gotten along better." He then departed from his prepared remarks to offer Xi and his wife a private tour of an unfinished ballroom on the property, still roughly a year from completion — an offer that was equal parts hospitality and spectacle.

Xi, for his part, thanked his hosts for receiving him with "meticulous care and consideration," and declared that the two leaders were "making history in our bilateral engagements." Both speeches were notably heavy on cultural symbolism, with Xi tracing the arc of US-China relations from their wartime alliance against Japan in the 1940s through the celebrated ping-pong diplomacy of the Nixon era. The guest list at the dinner illustrated just how much economic weight was riding on the encounter. Cabinet secretaries, tech industry chief executives, social media bosses, and conservative broadcasters filled the room, with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk drawing laughter at one table while Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth sat in concentrated silence nearby.

Family members of the president, including Ivanka, Eric, and Tiffany Trump, were also present.