BEIJING — President Donald Trump will arrive in Beijing next week to meet President Xi Jinping. The visit brings together the leaders of the world's two largest economies, which together generate over 42% of global GDP.

Since 2022, Washington has constructed a China-focused export-control regime targeting advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence and other frontier technologies. Beijing has responded by leveraging its dominance in critical minerals such as gallium and germanium. Export controls, sanctions and supply-chain networks now function as instruments of strategic coercion between the two countries, and trade policy in both countries is now inseparable from their national security doctrines.

Despite those frictions, economic interdependence between the two countries remains substantial, with enduring financial linkages and deeply integrated production networks. The U.S. and China anchor global supply chains that have been disrupted by the geopolitics of protracted conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.

Those conflicts have unleashed volatility in global commodity markets. Both countries depend on stable energy markets and are vulnerable to market volatility, and they also share overlapping priorities on energy market stability, pandemic risks, terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

Xi's Belt and Road Initiative has established a presence across Asia, Africa and Latin America, embedding Chinese standards and financing structures. The two governments' competition for influence across those regions forms part of the broader context for the Beijing meeting. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. and the Soviet Union established mechanisms to prevent accidental wars, a model that analysts have cited in discussions of great-power crisis management.