Beijing Summit Overlooks Critical Shift in US-China Services Trade and AI Exports

This analysis argues that the May 2026 Beijing Summit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump focused excessively on traditional tariff politics and agricultural goods, missing a more significant economic shift. The core story is the United States' record services trade surplus of $339.5 billion in 2025, driven by intellectual property, cloud computing, and financial services. In contrast, China recorded a services deficit of $238.1 billion. However, China is increasingly exporting artificial intelligence services, notably through the open-source model DeepSeek R1, which has captured significant market share in the Global South and regions like Russia and Belarus. This represents a new form of Chinese geopolitical influence and service export that did not exist during the 2018 trade war. The article contends that while headlines focused on soybeans and Boeing, the real economic dynamic is defined by America's dominance in high-value services and China's emerging footprint in AI infrastructure abroad, highlighting a lack of global rules for this new competitive landscape.