When Donald Trump first ran for president, he described China as a threat to the U.S. economy, saying it had gutted American factories and eroded the middle class. That tough rhetoric helped propel Trump to the White House a decade ago. Since then, however, he has increasingly spoken in favorable terms about Chinese President Xi Jinping, the geopolitical rival Trump is set to fete at a state dinner on Thursday.

“He’s a great gentleman; we get along great,” Trump said this month. “We have a very good trading relationship and, you know, they’re a competitor and all of that, but we have a very good relationship with President Xi.”

On issue after issue, the Republican president has given Xi the benefit of the doubt. Trump dismissed reports that China had provided Iran with satellite imagery, saying, “I think he’s behaved reasonably well.” After accusing Beijing of accessing U.S. voter files in 2020, Trump suggested he was reluctant to retaliate. “I think China is maybe a little bit different today than it was then,” he said.

Trump’s accommodating approach comes as China and the United States compete for global leadership and some of America’s traditional allies reconsider their strategies. China has strengthened its dominance in manufacturing and expanded into technologies such as artificial intelligence and electric vehicles, developments that pose risks for the economies of the U.S., Germany, Italy, France, South Korea and Japan, among other countries.

Having failed to change Chinese behavior through pressure, Trump has increasingly turned to hospitality. He traveled to Beijing in May, and the two leaders could meet twice more this year at international summits. Ahead of Xi’s arrival, Trump prepared a helipad on the White House South Lawn and lamented that the White House ballroom would not be ready to host the Chinese leader.

Trump has insisted that the U.S. remains comfortably ahead of China. But his effort last year to confront Beijing with escalating tariffs backfired. China holds a relative monopoly on the rare earths used in electronics and deployed that advantage to help force a trade armistice with Trump.

“Trump has dramatically shifted his approach to China because his initial attempt to use super-high tariffs and export restrictions was unsuccessful,” said Michael Kovrig, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group. “Xi and Trump got into a contest of leverage, and Xi came out on top.”

Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat who was detained by China during Trump’s first term, said Trump has also largely weakened the economic and national security alliances that previously could have helped apply pressure on Beijing.

Trump has mocked French President Emmanuel Macron in speeches. He has taken an inconsistent position on NATO after several members did not fully support his decision to start a war with Iran. He has also launched a potentially severe trade conflict with Canada, a longtime ally that he has taunted as a prospective 51st American state.

“He’s executing Xi’s wedge tactics for him, and along the way, helping Xi to tell a story about China as the more stable and responsible power,” Kovrig said. “It’s led to a wave of Western leaders visiting Beijing and seeking to stabilize and improve their relations with Xi so they can focus more on dealing with problems Trump is causing them.”

Trump can point to some symbolic gains from maintaining a cordial relationship with Xi. Xi met three times with Democratic President Joe Biden on the sidelines of international summits. Trump, by contrast, will have secured a pair of reciprocal state visits, suggesting that the leaders of the world’s two largest economies are comfortable communicating with each other.

The trade imbalance in goods between the U.S. and China has declined compared with the same period in 2025, according to Census Bureau figures. The Trump administration has nevertheless said China appears to be routing more goods through countries such as Vietnam to reduce the impact of tariffs.

Trump’s continuing tariffs have not curbed China’s manufacturing sector. China has found new markets and displaced competition from other industrialized countries. It exported more goods to the rest of the world while recording a $1.2 trillion global trade surplus last year. Its low-priced electric vehicles have undercut auto industries in Germany, Japan and South Korea.

China and the U.S. are using their trade truce to strengthen their respective positions. China is expanding its military and artificial intelligence capabilities despite limited access to advanced computer chips. The Trump administration has pursued partnerships aimed at developing rare earth supplies.

Trump is also pressing for the U.S. to accelerate AI development despite voter resistance to data centers and recent warnings about safety from leading AI companies. On social media this week, he said anyone slowing AI development was helping China because the technology would become “the Greatest Economic Development Engine in History — Bigger than Oil, Gold, Diamonds, or even the Internet.”

China has also been accused of having its AI companies train on U.S. models. That allegation presents a challenge for Trump and the U.S. economy if artificial intelligence becomes central to global economic and technological dominance.

Still, Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters at the White House last week that it was “unfair to just label China as a country” a “bad actor” on AI. Asked whether Trump would raise the issue with Xi, Blanche said, “Those two presidents have a great relationship. … They get along, they make deals together.”

State visits usually produce policy or trade “deliverables.” It is not yet clear what Thursday’s visit will produce, and the principal outcome could be the relationship itself rather than specific, measurable goals, said Evan Medeiros, a professor at Georgetown University.

That could mean the U.S. is not positioning itself to compete with China as effectively as it should, said Medeiros, who previously served as the Obama White House’s National Security Council director for China.

“We have this idiosyncratic president who believes in personal relationships and just wants to get along with Xi Jinping for the optics of getting along with him,” Medeiros said. “The problem is that this idiosyncratic approach is coming at precisely the time when we really need to be amping up all dimensions of our competition.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.