Trump’s State Dinner for Xi Replays a 1972 Toast

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan for a White House state dinner on September 24, 2026. The East Room meal opened with a California sparkling-wine toast aimed at 1972 and a main course of sesame-crusted sea bass.

The evening sat inside a long US-China dining script. Mushrooms and squash came back from Xi’s last White House dinner, the steak that once defined an American night for Beijing stayed off the card, and the head table filled with the companies that now sit at the center of the rivalry.

Sea Bass Replaced the Steak at Xi’s Return Dinner

Melania Trump led the preparations, and the Office of the First Lady said the three courses used American ingredients with subtle Chinese influence. The dinner was held in the East Room, the same room that hosted Xi and Peng on September 25, 2015.

Guests started on yellow squash velouté with a wild mushroom fricassée, crispy pancetta, and scallion oil. The fish course was sea bass in toasted sesame, with braised baby bok choy, roasted garden eggplant, and sauce verte. Dessert was a fruit-shaped vanilla crémeux with sour cherry confit, walnut frangipane, and ice cream made with honey taken from the White House hives.

Pancetta on the first course means this was not a meatless night. What changed was the main protein. There was no rib-eye, no lamb cannon, and no lobster course of the kind earlier China dinners used to show off American water and range.

THE EAST ROOM MENU

Roasted garden eggplant sat on the fish plate as a caramelized side, not as a named foreign specialty. Sesame and bok choy did the clearer diplomatic work, the same way Shaoxing wine once flavored a soup in that room.

A California Bottle From the 1972 Toast

Before the squash arrived, glasses went up with Schramsberg Blanc De Noir. The First Lady’s office said the pour honored the “Toast to Peace” that President Richard Nixon and Premier Zhou Enlai shared in Beijing in 1972, and that the same American sparkling house still appears at White House functions.

The winery’s own record is more specific. Schramsberg says it was the 1969 Blanc de Blancs at the 1972 toast on February 25, 1972, the first time the house, or any American wine, was served at a White House or state event at home or abroad. The 2026 glass was a Blanc De Noir from the same Calistoga producer, a sequel rather than a cellar match.

Jack and Jamie Davies had founded Schramsberg in 1965 on Napa Valley’s Diamond Mountain. Their son Hugh Davies, now the winery’s president, later called that Beijing toast a moment when two leaders, “in full recognition of their countries’ differences,” still looked for common ground, language he used around a Toast to Peace anniversary sparkling wine marking.

Nixon’s own banquet remarks in Peking had already drawn that line. He said both sides believed deeply in their own systems and still meant to live together in peace. Trump, welcoming Xi back to Washington for the first time in over a decade, reached for the same idea in plainer words, saying both leaders understood the differences between their nations and still wanted strong ties.

How 2011’s Rib-Eye Gave Way to Fish

White House China dinners have swung between “cook American” and “hint at China.” On January 19, 2011, the Obama White House, at the request of the Chinese delegation, built a night it called quintessentially American for President Hu Jintao: poached Maine lobster, dry-aged rib-eye with buttermilk crisp onions, and old-fashioned apple pie with ice cream, with jazz after the plates.

Xi’s first state dinner, on September 25, 2015, went the other way. White House Executive Chef Cris Comerford and pastry chef Susie Morrison worked with guest chef Anita Lo, a Chinese-American cook from New York, on a harvest menu. It opened with wild mushroom soup with Shaoxing wine and squash from the Kitchen Garden, moved through butter-poached Maine lobster with rice noodle rolls, and finished on a grilled cannon of Colorado lamb. Dessert ran to poppyseed bread-and-butter pudding, lychee sorbet, pumpkin mooncakes, and a garden display of sugar lotus flowers.

Thursday night borrowed the 2015 vegetables and dropped the 2011 steak. Wild mushrooms came back in a fricassée. Squash came back as a velouté. The protein that carried the plate was fish in sesame, with bok choy, a lighter Chinese cue than Shaoxing or rice noodle rolls, and no guest chef named in the release.

THREE WHITE HOUSE DINNERS FOR CHINA

Leaving beef off a China state dinner will read, in cattle country, as a missed American staple. The kitchen’s choice tracks the 2015 fusion more than the 2011 steakhouse, and it keeps pork in the first course so the symbolism stops at the entrée.

Musk, Huang and Cook Shared the Head Table

The White House guest list mixed the Chinese delegation with US cabinet officers, three Supreme Court justices, and a run of technology and finance names. Photos from the East Room put Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk at the head table with the two first couples, joined by Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and his wife Lori Huang, AMD chief Lisa Su, and Tim Cook, listed by the White House as chairman of the board of Apple.

Farther into the room sat Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, TikTok investor Jeff Yass, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were on the American official side. Cai Qi, Wang Yi, Vice Premier He Lifeng, and Ambassador Xie Feng were among the Chinese party.

THE HEAD TABLE

• The hosts: Donald Trump and Melania Trump.
• The guests of honor: Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan.
• The car-and-rocket seat: Elon Musk, seated with the first couples.
• The chip seats: Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Lisa Su of AMD, with Lori Huang.
• The phone seat: Tim Cook, Apple’s chairman of the board.

That is a different room from 2011, when the draw was Barbra Streisand, Yo-Yo Ma, and a jazz bill, or 2015, when NE-YO sang after dinner. The 2026 list put the people who build chips, phones, cars, and models within speaking distance of the two presidents. After Xi’s toast, Trump and Musk raised glasses at that table before the sea bass went down.

The hard files of the visit, Taiwan, Iran, and the speed of AI, were not printed on the menu cards. They were sitting in the chairs.

The Room Was Dressed in Chinese Red

The First Lady’s office said the décor drew on red’s long standing in Chinese history. Urns held overflowing red blossoms. Tables wore red linens and sprays of dahlias and ranunculus, with vermeil from the White House collection and the Reagan State Service, the scarlet-bordered china with etched gold bands.

Melania Trump wore a white shirt with a large bow and high-waisted black pants. Peng Liyuan wore a long red gown. Trump was in a black tuxedo; Xi wore a high-collared black jacket.

Entertainment stayed inside the house bands. Christopher Macchio, the classical tenor who sang at the 2025 inauguration, headlined. He was backed by “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, “The Commandant’s Own” United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps, the United States Army Chorus, and the United States Army Strings. No pop bill this time, and no guest chef named on the program.

The honey ice cream closed the meal on a White House crop. Melania unveiled a new hive on the grounds in April, and Thursday’s dessert used honey harvested there, a domestic garnish on a night otherwise busy with borrowed Chinese cues.

In His Toast, Xi Paired MAGA With Rejuvenation

Trump told Xi, Peng, and the Chinese delegation that Melania and he were delighted to welcome them again, called them “truly outstanding, amazing people,” and said Chinese hospitality had been “on full display” during his own trip to Beijing. “We hope to show you the same honour as you returned to Washington for the first time in over a decade,” he said. He presented a bald eagle, the American national bird, as a gift he said should have an honored place in Beijing.

Xi answered with a calendar of old contacts, then a live political pairing. He thanked the Trumps for arrangements “prepared with meticulous care,” wished the room a happy Mid-Autumn Festival, the family-reunion holiday his compatriots were marking at home, and said the two presidents had exchanged state visits in less than half a year after Trump’s trip to China in May 2026.

President Trump has pledged to make America great again and led the American people in making significant strides. China is committed to achieving great national rejuvenation, and Chinese modernization has kept breaking new ground. These two goals are both ambitious and can surely be mutually reinforcing.

Xi Jinping, President of China, White House state dinner, September 24, 2026

He walked the table through older scenes: George Washington’s Chinese porcelain, the Hump air route and the rescue of American pilots, ping-pong diplomacy, and redwood trees Nixon gave that Xi said had taken root in Zhejiang, where he once worked. He said Thursday’s talks had been “sincere and in-depth” and had “reached common understanding on many issues,” adding “new substance” to a “constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability.”

The White House carried the toasts live. The language in the room stayed warmer than the briefing papers outside it.

November in Shenzhen, December in Miami

Xi landed at Joint Base Andrews on September 23, 2026, on a trip set to run through September 25. Trump met him on the tarmac, a courtesy James M. Lindsay, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted Trump had also extended to Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Anchorage in August 2025, and not to the usual run of allied leaders.

The Washington dinner was the third Trump-Xi meeting in 11 months, after Busan on October 30, 2025, where they moved to cool a trade war, and Beijing in May 2026, where they agreed to start talks on AI guardrails that, Lindsay wrote, only began the week of the state visit. It was also the second of four meetings booked for 2026. They are due to meet again on the margins of APEC in Shenzhen in November, then at the G20 at Trump National Doral Miami in December.

THE DINNERS AND THE MEETINGS

1. February 25, 1972: Nixon and Zhou raise Schramsberg in Beijing in the toast the White House still cites.
2. January 19, 2011: The Obama White House serves Hu Jintao steak, lobster, and apple pie.
3. September 25, 2015: Obama and Michelle Obama host Xi and Peng in the East Room on a mushroom, lobster, and lamb menu.
4. May 2026: Trump visits China; the two leaders agree to talk about AI guardrails and a “constructive” relationship of strategic stability.
5. September 24, 2026: The East Room returns to mushrooms, squash, and a 1972 wine cue, with sea bass on the main plate.

Lindsay wrote on September 23 that the Washington stop was unlikely to produce major breakthroughs, with Taiwan still an elephant in the room and China still buying Iranian oil. Xi, a day later, told the same building that the two national projects could reinforce each other. The plates, the red linen, and the California bubbles did the work state dinners always do. The next two meetings will show whether the common understanding survived the honey ice cream.