President Trump swapped Joe Biden's official portrait for a photograph of an autopen before walking Chinese President Xi Jinping through the White House gallery, and Xi burst out laughing.
The moment, captured in a video the White House posted Thursday, came during Xi's state visit to Washington on September 24, 2026. Trump guided the Chinese leader through what the White House calls the "Presidential Walk of Fame," a gallery displaying portraits of nearly every former president. When they reached the spot reserved for Biden, Trump pointed to a photograph of the mechanical signing device and told Xi, "And this is the autopen... it's Biden."
An aide standing near Xi appeared to translate the remark into Mandarin. Xi laughed. The exchange lasted only seconds, but it carried more than a year of political backstory, and it unfolded against a summit loaded with unresolved friction over trade, Taiwan, Iran, and artificial intelligence.
Trump has made Biden's reliance on the autopen a recurring line of attack since returning to office. Before leaving the White House in January 2025, Biden used the device to issue pardons for family members, commute criminal sentences, including for non-violent drug offenders, and sign legislation.
In December 2025, Trump escalated the issue from mockery to executive action. He posted on Truth Social that he was nullifying every document Biden had signed by autopen:
"Any and all Documents, Proclamations, Executive Orders, Memorandums, or Contracts, signed by Order of the now infamous and unauthorized 'AUTOPEN,' within the Administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., are hereby null, void, and of no further force or effect."
A second passage in the same post targeted pardons directly:
"Anyone receiving 'Pardons,' 'Commutations', or any other Legal Document so signed, please be advised that said Document has been fully and completely terminated, and is of no Legal effect."
Replacing Biden's portrait with a photograph of the device itself was the visual punchline to an argument Trump has been building for months. That he chose to deliver it in front of a foreign head of state, and on camera, made the point impossible to miss.
Xi became the first Chinese leader to make two formal visits to the United States, Just The News reported. Trump greeted Xi on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews, a gesture no American president had made for a foreign leader's arrival since John F. Kennedy welcomed British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1962, the New York Post reported.
Trump offered Xi a tour of the presidential helicopter and presented him with a bald eagle sculpture designed in collaboration with First Lady Melania Trump. Trump described the eagle as "the national symbol of the United States and an embodiment of the free and soaring spirit of America." The state dinner that evening in the East Room drew both first ladies, Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan, along with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, among other guests.
The pageantry was deliberate. But so were the policy discussions behind it.
The summit's most concrete economic outcome was a two-month extension of the existing U.S.-China trade truce, which had been set to expire in November. The truce had paused a broader trade conflict by reducing U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods and lifting Beijing's export controls on rare earths.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the extension modestly, saying it provided "more time to see what we can do on the economic front," Reuters reported. That phrasing acknowledged what analysts already recognized: the extension delayed hard decisions rather than making them.
China is meeting its commitment to purchase 25 million tons of U.S. soybeans but is falling short on a $17 billion pledge for other agricultural goods. Rare-earth deliveries are also lagging, Reuters reported. Trump has repeatedly called on China to buy more American goods, and the gap between Beijing's promises and its follow-through remains a live irritant.
Dylan Loh, an analyst at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, said the extension would provide "some calm on the trade front" but noted that Chinese negotiators had likely wanted a longer reprieve. "I think the Chinese would have hoped for a longer extension, but they are also realistic," Loh said.
One day before the summit, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that a $14 billion U.S. arms package for Taiwan is "under review." The announcement landed against a backdrop of mounting Chinese pressure. Xi used the summit to urge the United States to explicitly oppose Taiwan independence and repeated a warning he first delivered in May, that Trump should show "prudence" over the island.
Trump had suggested in May that Taiwan arms sales could serve as a bargaining chip with Beijing. Rana Mitter, a professor of U.S.-Asia relations at Harvard Kennedy School, said Trump "has been willing to talk about the levels of arms sales in a way that previous administrations haven't." But Mitter added a caveat that mattered more than the headline: "I don't see any sign... there's going to be a fundamental change in terms of US assurances (to Taiwan)."
Jared Mondschein, director of research at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, offered a strategic read. Trump, he said, is "trying to stabilise relations for now until the US can basically decrease its vulnerabilities to Beijing." That framing cast the summit's warmth as tactical rather than sentimental, a pause, not a pivot.
A Chinese government readout of the talks said Xi told Trump "to end the war and come to a negotiated settlement with Tehran as soon as possible." Trump has repeatedly called on China to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz for shipping, and China has been accused of helping Iran target U.S. military assets in the Middle East, a charge that complicates any role Beijing might play as mediator.
Mitter was blunt about the prospects. "The idea that China is going to be a big power broker, appear publicly and negotiate solutions, I think that's really unlikely," he said. "I don't think that China is going to be the magic card that gets the US out of trouble in the region."
On artificial intelligence, Xi declared that AI should "always be under human control" and said the technology must "serve the well-being of the people." Trump, by contrast, referred to AI as "super intelligence" and dismissed calls for regulation. Loh noted that while both leaders broadly agree on the risks AI presents, "they diverge on how to manage this." He added that "deep suspicions and intensifying competition" on AI make breakthroughs on governance unlikely.
Xi described the summit's results as yielding "many new consensuses." The concrete deliverables told a thinner story: two pandas loaned to a zoo in Atlanta, an invitation for 100,000 young Americans to visit China for exchanges, and the two-month trade truce extension.
Xi also invoked the "Thucydides Trap", the theory that conflict becomes likely when a rising power threatens an established one, and called for regular military dialogue and crisis-prevention mechanisms between the two countries.
Beneath the ceremony, a security concern added tension. The Pentagon confirmed it is working to retrieve F-35 fighter jet components that were diverted to Hong Kong and seized by the Chinese government in May. "We are actively working with US authorities and industry partners to retrieve these components, investigate the incident, and place safeguards to avoid a future occurrence," the Pentagon said in a statement reported by the New York Post.
That disclosure, advanced U.S. military technology sitting in Chinese government hands, sat uneasily alongside the bald eagle sculpture and the state dinner toasts. It was a reminder that the relationship between Washington and Beijing operates on two tracks simultaneously: one ceremonial, one adversarial.
The autopen joke got the laugh. Whether the summit's substance will age as well is another question entirely. Two months is not a long time, and the list of unresolved disputes between the world's two largest economies is a lot longer than the list of deals they signed.
