China is on Trumps mind Later this month, President Donald Trump will meet with China's Xi Jinping in Washington. Earlier this summer, Trump met with European leaders at a NATO summit in Turkey . You can guess which one occupied more of the president's attention. China isn’t America’s only concern in 2026, of course. The Trump administration’s latest National Security Strategy addressed everything from the Western Hemisphere to Israel to, yes, America's European allies. But more than any other global dynamic, the U.S. rivalry with China has come to define both Trump’s policies and the United States’s global outlook.
GOP leaders are betting the House on President Trump in this year’s elections. The midterm cycle is always a referendum on the sitting president, whether members of his party like it or not. And if there was a clear message from the Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas, it’s that GOP leaders have embraced that reality with zeal, leaning heavily on Trump to animate their base and stave off a blue wave.