The Democratic Party congressional leadership responded to a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping with accusations that the fascist president, who had just threatened to “annihilate” Iran, was “appeasing” China.

Twenty-one Democratic senators, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, issued a joint statement Thursday accusing Trump of not “confronting China’s ... complicity in attacks against our troops or economic and military aggression against our allies.”

On the Senate floor the same day, Schumer said Trump had greeted Xi at his plane “sort of as a supplicant” and declared, “Trump needs to finally show some backbone.”

The senators declared that “America’s support for Taiwan’s self-defense is non-negotiable.” They demanded that the Trump administration expand the arming of Taiwan, declaring, “The Trump Administration must immediately deliver congressionally approved defense assistance to Taiwan, including the $1.3 billion in funds provided by this Congress, existing weapons sales and the $14 billion package of new arms sales approved nine months ago.”

They also called on the United States to “directly confront China’s renewed island-building in the South China Sea and increasing aggression in the East China Sea.”

The US government notified Congress of $18.27 billion in arms sales to Taiwan in Trump’s first term, including 66 F-16 fighter jets for $8 billion in 2019, and $8.38 billion under President Joe Biden, according to the Forum on the Arms Trade.

The Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act, which Biden signed in December 2022, authorized up to $2 billion a year in military grants to Taiwan and $1 billion a year in weapons drawn from US stocks, and Biden ordered three such drawdowns worth nearly $1.5 billion.

Trump set the record for a Taiwan arms package in December 2025, notifying Congress of $11.1 billion in sales, including 82 HIMARS rocket launchers and 420 ATACMS missiles.

The $1.3 billion the Democrats cite consists of $1 billion for a Pentagon “Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative” and $300 million in military grants, both in the spending bill Trump signed February 3.

The $14 billion package, which Reuters reported in March consists mostly of Patriot and NASAMS air defense missiles, cleared Congress in January but has never been formally notified. After meeting Xi in Beijing in May, Trump told Fox News, “I’m holding that in abeyance and it depends on China. It’s a very good negotiating chip for us, frankly.”

The senators also attacked Trump for “greenlighting sales of high-end chips and manufacturing equipment to China” and for failing “to hold Xi accountable for support to Iran by Chinese companies that contributed to attacks against American soldiers,” which they called “an unconscionable dereliction of his duty.”

Schumer and seven other Democratic senators issued a statement Tuesday declaring, “We can’t let President Xi leave stronger than when he arrived,” accusing the fascist presidency of “weakness.”

Representative Ro Khanna of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, wrote in the Hill on Tuesday that “Trump has been appeasing his ‘friend’ Xi.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Wednesday, “Taiwan is an ally, and hopefully Donald Trump is not going to give up Taiwanese autonomy or sovereignty or territorial integrity.”

These warmongering statements condemn an administration that has been more aggressive against China than any of its predecessors. The average US tariff on Chinese goods rose from 20.7 percent on the day Trump took office in January 2025 to 127.2 percent in early May 2025, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and stood at 47.5 percent in November, after truces reached in May and October.

By the institute’s count, the increase through November exceeded the entire increase of Trump’s first term by 10 percentage points.

US forces have seized tankers carrying Venezuelan and Iranian oil to China on the high seas, including the Centuries east of Barbados in December, the Aquila II in the Indian Ocean in February, and the Majestic X, bound for the Chinese port of Zhoushan, in April.

The Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on Chinese refineries that buy Iranian oil, including Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) in April, which it called China’s second-largest independent refinery.

Xi’s meeting was preceded by the Trump administration’s announcement that it had put weapons into orbit, in a move hailed by the Wall Street Journal as sending a signal to Xi.

At an Air & Space Forces Association conference on September 14, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the United States “now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”

The Journal wrote in an editorial the next day, “The timing of the space announcement may be no accident coming ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington next week.”

Xi arrived Wednesday, the day after Trump threatened from the podium of the UN General Assembly to “annihilate” Iran. Trump met him at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland in what the Associated Press called “a rare planeside greeting.”

On Thursday, a B-2 bomber and four F-22 fighter jets flew over Xi’s arrival ceremony at the White House, where Trump hailed “a truly great friendship” with Xi.

Trump hosted a state dinner Thursday night whose guests included Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Apple Chairman Tim Cook and the multi-billionaire Elon Musk. The White House list also named the chief executives of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Chief Justice John Roberts.

“We’ve never gotten along better,” Trump said in his toast.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Wednesday, as Xi landed, that the trade truce reached in October 2025 would be extended by two months, to January 10, 2027.

The two leaders announced no agreement Thursday on advanced computer chips or on Taiwan. Xi told Trump that China hoped the US would “adhere to the correct position of opposing ‘Taiwan independence,’” Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, reported Thursday.

A Bloomberg headline the same day read, “Trump, Xi Buy Time on Trade With Neither Able to Afford a Fight.”

The summit took place amid a deepening economic and political crisis of American imperialism. The 10-year US Treasury yield ended Thursday at 5.18 percent, higher than at any point since 2007.

The national debt stood at $40.07 trillion on Wednesday, and the federal deficit from October through August reached $1.97 trillion.

The Federal Reserve, which had not raised interest rates since 2023, lifted its benchmark rate on September 16 after annual inflation stood at 3.4 percent in August, with gasoline up 27.4 percent over 12 months.

Chinese exports have continued to grow despite the trade war. China’s trade surplus reached $119.1 billion in August, and its exports to the United States rose 34.4 percent from a year earlier, partly because US tariffs had driven them down in 2025, the Associated Press reported September 8.

The union apparatus has lined up behind the campaign against China. After Trump told Fox News on September 11, “If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I’d be OK with that,” United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain called the remark “a slap in the face” at a UAW conference in Lansing, Michigan, on September 15.

“We shouldn’t be doing business with countries that ... basically want slave labor,” Fain said.

At the same conference, Abdul El-Sayed, the UAW-endorsed Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Michigan, called Trump’s remark “a huge capitulation.”

As Trump met Xi Thursday, Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio used Senate speeches to promote their legislation banning Chinese cars from the US.

Slotkin called Chinese cars “surveillance packages on wheels” when the two introduced the bill in April. The UAW, the Teamsters, the Machinists union and the United Steelworkers back the bill, Slotkin’s office said Thursday.