President Donald Trump is back in the United States from the longest foreign trip of his nine months in office. While at home he faces a complex economic picture and a prolonged government shutdown, abroad leaders lavished him with gifts and the royal treatment during his whirlwind, three-country tour around Asia. That was until he met Chinese President Xi Jinping, with whom he reached what appears to be a fragile truce in the two countries’ tit-for-tat trade war. 

Gifts and flattery flowed freely throughout Trump’s five-day Asia tour. Malaysia rolled out a red carpet and teed up a ceasefire deal that will form the basis of a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for Trump. Japan offered up a golf club used by Shinzo Abe, Trump’s golfing buddy and the country's late leader, as well as 250 cherry blossom trees to spruce up the nation’s capital. South Korea gave Trump a replica gold crown from an ancient dynasty - a gift, they said, befitting a man of commanding authority and peacemaking prowess.  

There were honor guard presentations in royal halls, military fanfare and pageantry. A South Korean military brass band played the Village People’s “YMCA” – a Trump rally standard. A banquet later featured beef patties with ketchup, one of the president’s favorite meals, and a seafood salad that, Korean officials told reporters, was a tribute to Trump’s business success in New York. (One morning on the trip, when I checked luggage for Air Force One, a government official asked me if I was dropping off a personal suitcase or official gifts.) 

In return, Trump offered those countries’ leaders validation from the world’s most powerful nation. He heaped praise on newly installed Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, predicting she would soon be recognized as one of that nation’s greatest leaders of all time. That’s even though she has barely started working and sits atop an untested political coalition so narrow and so fragile it almost didn’t come together - and could collapse at any minute. 

The vibes were quite different when Trump met Xi for their first face-to-face talks since 2019. Xi offered no fawning adulation or superlatives about Trump’s dealmaking ability. He read from a sheet of prepared remarks. The leaders met and then Xi left. No gifts, no pomp and not an ounce of ketchup. 

This time, it was Trump playing host and delivering the praise. When Trump spoke with me and five other reporters aboard Air Force One after the meeting, he called Xi “a great leader, a leader of a very powerful, a very strong country.” 

In a cramped airbase VIP lounge normally used by Korean defense officials on work trips, the two leaders cemented a deal that has been in the works for months and nearly fell apart in recent weeks. Trump said Xi would let rare earth minerals flow, crack down on opioid-related chemicals and buy soybeans – all pledges he has made in the past – in exchange for tariff relief. 

A vast gulf still separates the United States and China, and the root causes of the countries’ trade war remain unresolved. But if Xi and Trump have managed to successfully lower the temperature in their countries’ relationship, other countries around the region will consider that a fine gift.      

Follow Reuters/Ipsos polling on the president's approval ratings here.

China pledged to expand farm trade with the United States, and Trump said Beijing would buy "tremendous" volumes of soybeans, but neither gave specifics, disappointing investors hoping for a return of its once-robust purchases.