Trump, Xi hail friendly relations at White House state dinner

There was a moment in the coverage of Thursday's state dinner that said more than any toast: President Trump handed Xi Jinping a gift of an American elm tree. Not a trade deal or a joint communiqué, just a tree. It is the kind of gesture that gets dismissed as pageantry by people who don't understand how the world actually works. When the most powerful men on Earth are talking about the future instead of the past, that is not a photo op. That is a signal.

The left has spent a decade telling us that China is a foe we must confront with moral lectures at every turn. They wanted the evening to be awkward. They wanted a scolding. Instead, they got Trump welcoming Xi to the White House and hailing friendly relations, and the awkward part is for the critics who cannot process a Republican President acting like a head of state rather than a scold. We do not have to pretend Beijing is a liberal democracy to acknowledge the value of realism over romance in foreign policy.

The dinner was not a surrender of American interests. It was a meeting between the two men who actually control the balance of power in the Pacific, and pretending otherwise is a luxury we cannot afford. Trump's approach treats Xi as what he is: a serious leader with a long memory. The endless carping from the foreign policy establishment about "credibility" and "standing" sounds good in a seminar room, but it does not move goods, stop a naval incident, or keep the Taiwan Strait from boiling over.

For business and for peace, talk is better than silence. If the price of that is a state dinner and a nice gift, the American people should take that trade every time. The alternative is four more years of the cold shoulder, which has delivered us nothing but tension and two wars. For a President who campaigned on stopping the chaos, the absence of drama is the win. We can quibble with the menu, but not with the direction.