Trump Winces as B-1 Bombers Greet Xi at Andrews

President Donald Trump winced as two B-1 bombers passed low over Joint Base Andrews on September 23, 2026. Chinese President Xi Jinping, standing beside him for the anthem, did not move.

The pass was billed as military honor for a rare planeside welcome that opened Xi’s three-day state visit. It also fixed the first image of the trip: the American host recoiling from American jets.

Two B-1s Crossed During the Anthem

Xi’s aircraft landed at the Maryland base shortly before 6 p.m., and Trump and first lady Melania Trump were already at the foot of the stairs. They had walked there holding hands and waited while Xi and Peng Liyuan, China’s first lady, came down the steps. Trump wore an overcoat and gloves in air of about 17 C and pulled one glove off to shake Xi’s hand.

The U.S. Air Force Band started, then paused while the two couples mixed at the bottom of the stairs. Xi shook hands with Chinese officials, the four walked a 100-foot red carpet lined with U.S. service members, and they stopped for photographs. Cannons fired. The Chinese anthem played first. Trump saluted through “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the two bombers came in low.

Video from the tarmac shows Trump’s face tightening at the roar, his head pulling down while he held the salute. Xi’s expression did not change, and neither did Peng’s or Melania’s. Trump appeared to glance at the noise, then the four exchanged a last round of small talk. Xi and Peng got into their car. Trump and Melania walked to Marine One. Neither leader spoke on the ramp.

THE THREE DAYS IN WASHINGTON

1. September 23, 2026: Xi lands at Joint Base Andrews and takes a planeside welcome from Trump, with a red carpet, honor cordon, both anthems, a 21-gun salute, and two B-1s overhead.
2. September 24, 2026: Formal state arrival at the White House, a Rose Garden troop review, talks in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room, then a state dinner in the East Room.
3. September 25, 2026: Private tea with the Trumps and a tour of the National Archives before Xi leaves the United States.

Back at the White House that night, Trump told reporters he thought the Chinese “appreciate it,” calling them “tremendous people.” Asked whether Iran would come up, he said, “We’ll see. We’ll see. I’ll be talking about that and many other subjects. We’ll see, but it’s all coming along well, including that.”

Why the Air Force Sent Lancers Over Andrews

The B-1B Lancer is not a ceremonial transport. Air Force Global Strike Command still lists it as a long-range, multi-role heavy bomber built to carry the largest conventional payload in the Air Force inventory, with swing wings, terrain-following radar, and four afterburning engines. A low pass by two of them during a national anthem is a show of force dressed as courtesy.

That is why the wince traveled. Four General Electric F101-GE-102 turbofans, each rated at 30,000-plus pounds of thrust with afterburner, make a short, hard sound even when the jets are not trying to go supersonic. A person standing on the carpet, looking up in a salute, is in the worst spot to pretend otherwise. Xi had the same sky over him and did not flinch, which is the clip. The ordinary reading is simpler than the geopolitical one: the host picked one of the loudest combat aircraft in the fleet, pointed a camera at his own face, and got a human reflex on tape.

B-1B LANCER, PER THE AIR FORCE SHEET

The jet reached initial operational capability in October 1986, lost its nuclear role years later, and still flies with a conventional load of bombs, mines, and cruise missiles. Putting two of them over a visiting head of state told Beijing the U.S. bomber force was present. It also made the first night of the visit a sound-level problem.

Some circulating posts called the Andrews jets B-2s. They were not. The aircraft over the carpet on September 23 were B-1s. A B-2 Spirit and four F-22 Raptors had been listed for a separate White House ceremony on September 24, a different show on a different day.

A Tarmac Greeting Washington Almost Never Gives

U.S. presidents usually wait at the White House. Foreign heads of state land at Andrews, walk a cordon, and motor in. Trump broke that pattern and stood at the stairs, which White House spokesperson Anna Kelly cast as payback in kind. “President Xi hosted President Trump in China for a historic summit this summer, and President Trump is reciprocating his hospitality by welcoming the Chinese delegation for a reciprocal visit this week,” Kelly said.

Accounts of Andrews protocol put the last time a sitting U.S. president personally met a foreign leader at the base in 1962, when John F. Kennedy greeted British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. That is a different fact from Xi’s own gap. His last state visit to Washington was in 2015, 11 years earlier, which the 316th Wing noted on the Air Force photographs of the Andrews arrival. Trump has done an airport greeting before in this term, meeting Vladimir Putin in Anchorage in August 2025, but that was Alaska, not Andrews.

Melania Trump had already set the tone on television that morning. “He’s coming on our soil,” she said, “and we need to welcome them with the most respect.” Col. Christopher Robinson, commander of the 89th Airlift Wing, was among those on the ramp. China’s foreign ministry, for its part, had framed the trip as an in-depth exchange on bilateral ties and “major issues concerning world peace and development,” and called two leader visits inside half a year a milestone.

THE ANDREWS HONOR PACKAGE

• The carpet: A 100-foot red runner from the aircraft stairs across the tarmac.
• The cordon: 21 service members flanking the walk, the count used for a visiting head of state.
• The colors: Two three-person teams carrying the U.S. and Chinese flags.
• The guns: A salute battery firing a 21-gun salute while the anthems played.
• The band: The U.S. Air Force Band, Chinese anthem first, then the U.S. anthem.
• The jets: Two B-1s timed to the U.S. anthem, with platoons from each service on the ground.

Full honors at Andrews are not unusual. A president standing in them, under combat bombers, is. The gesture was meant to look larger than the welcome Trump received in Beijing in May. The still that moved was smaller: one face against engine noise.

Bessent Moves the Truce to January

The policy clock moved the same evening, off camera. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, after a 90-minute meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng at World Bank headquarters, said the United States and China would extend the Busan trade arrangement that had been due to lapse on November 10. The new date is January 10.

That is going to be extended until January 10 to give us more time to see what we can do on the economic front.

Scott Bessent, U.S. Treasury secretary, on Special Report

The Busan deal dates to October 2025, when Trump and Xi met in South Korea and pulled bilateral tariffs back from triple-digit levels. China agreed to keep rare earths and other critical minerals flowing. Washington cut a fentanyl-linked tariff. Bessent and He had already sat through about 12 hours of talks in New York on September 20. Wednesday was unfinished business, not a new grand bargain.

Bessent said Beijing was meeting a pledge to buy 25 million tons of soybeans and lagging on a pledge to buy $17 billion in other farm goods. U.S. officials have also said rare-earth deliveries are short of what Busan required. He was blunt about what the extra two months are for. “I don’t know whether a bigger deal can be done. I don’t know whether we will just roll the current deal,” he said. “There are some deliverables that have not been perfect on the Chinese side so we also want to see, now that we’ve sat down and told them our expectations, to see if over the coming months, they could be a bit more fulsome in enacting the agreement.”

One figure both sides keep repeating is $30 billion in tariff cuts on non-critical goods, a possible Board of Trade list that would run both ways, with U.S. energy, farm products, and medical devices against Chinese consumer and low-tech items. Bessent also said the New York round had agreed to an artificial-intelligence safety “hotline” for incident notices. China’s public readout mentioned AI talks and did not confirm the line. Trump, for his part, has said he will not slow U.S. AI work and wants to keep a lead he now calls “super intelligence.”

This is the third in-person meeting of the year after Busan and the May session in Beijing, and Bessent has already pointed to later stops in Shenzhen and Miami. On September 18 Trump signed the Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which authorizes tariffs of up to 100 percent on the largest buyers of Russian oil and gas, China among them. That lever sat unused while the red carpet went down.

The Honors Outrun What Beijing Staged

Rush Doshi, who directs the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote ahead of landing that the honors for Xi would exceed what Trump received in Beijing, and that the gap in pageantry tracks a wider gap in the relationship. His brief walks through ten issues that will define the visit, from the truce calendar and rare earths to Taiwan language, Iran, chips, and fentanyl. He does not expect a stack of deliverables. At most, he wrote, a short truce extension, some farm and energy purchases, and an AI dialogue.

Edgard D. Kagan, a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, put the same forecast in plainer words. The trip, he wrote, would likely be heavy on optics and light on progress, because each leader thinks he is the only one who can manage the other and both want the truce to hold.

The visit is likely to be heavy on optics and symbolism but light on substantive progress, highlighting both leaders’ conviction that each is the only one who can manage the other and that regular meetings are necessary to stabilize the bilateral relationship.

Edgard D. Kagan, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Beijing wants a longer pause, through the rest of Trump’s term if it can get it. Washington offered months, not years, and used the short leash as a compliance window. China also wants low or zero tariffs on that $30 billion slice of exports, a softer line on advanced chips, and a U.S. posture on Taiwan that sounds closer to “opposes independence” than “does not support it.” The White House wants rare earths in full, faster farm and aircraft buys, help on Iran and fentanyl, and, officials have said, movement on Americans detained in China.

May’s Beijing summit already showed how easy it is for the two capitals to leave a room with different memories. Trump announced Chinese purchases of 200 Boeing aircraft and new farm commitments. Beijing declined to confirm them. Doshi called that kind of split rare hours after a summit. It is the background against which a wince on a Maryland runway can look larger than it is, and against which a still Chinese president can look like the only person who planned the shot.

TWO CEREMONIES, TWO AIRSHOWS

The White House program is the larger piece of theater, and it was always going to be. Andrews was the improvisation: a president on the ramp, combat bombers on the anthem, and a camera tight enough to catch a reflex.

The State Dinner Still Has to Carry the Visit

On September 24 the two leaders were due on the State Floor and in the Rose Garden before private talks, then at an East Room dinner where both were expected to speak. The White House listed a tech-heavy guest list: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Michael Dell, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Jane Fraser, and Tim Cook. Friday’s plan was quieter, tea and the founding documents, then Xi’s departure.

Indo-Pacific governments will watch the language on Taiwan, chips, and tariffs more than the tarmac tape. Allies who spent 2025 worried about a U.S.-China clash are now just as worried that a warm visit will shrink their room to move. Taiwan will listen for any off-script line that treats arms sales as a bargaining chip. Farmers will listen for the $17 billion. Pentagon lawyers will listen for Iran. That is not settled by a bomber pass.

The last time Xi came for a full state visit, the Obama White House published Xi’s 2015 state visit fact sheet and kept the main ceremony on the South Lawn. Trump put the opening night at Andrews instead, under Lancers, and got the picture that opening night always risks when the honor is loud enough to drown the anthem.

Xi is scheduled to leave on September 25 after a private tea and a tour of the National Archives with the Trumps. The Busan truce now runs to January 10. The two B-1s have already gone home.