Biden, Xi's first face-to-face unlikely to have 'meaningful' impact on economic issues facing world: experts

President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will have their first in-person meeting since Biden took office in 2021 with the economy front and center for any discussions even as experts suggest little may result from it.

"Expectations for the upcoming Biden-Xi meeting are very low," Craig Singleton, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) told FOX Business. "Neither Washington nor Beijing has sought to suggest this face-to-face exchange will fundamentally alter the downward trajectory of U.S.-China relations.

"The formal extension of Xi’s tenure at the recently concluded 20th Party Congress locks in China’s current economic orientation — one that is unabashedly hostile to free market forces."

Xi has remained secure inside China’s COVID-19 bubble, but he will finally reenter the international arena as he plans to attend the upcoming G-20 meeting in Indonesia. He will also hold a number of one-on-one meetings with other world leaders, starting with Biden Monday. 

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He may have a lot to answer for as his country’s zero-COVID policy contributed to and consistently exacerbated the global supply chain crisis that helped drive up inflation. Biden may also address China’s frequent intellectual property theft of U.S. brands and products and violations of various trade agreements. 

"It's hard to imagine a longer list of serious challenges for G-20 Leaders to discuss," Kelly Ann Shaw, a partner at Hogan Lovells and a former lead G-20 negotiator, told FOX Business. 

"President Biden is going into these meetings amidst a global economic crisis, systemic inflation, critical energy and food crises, the war in Ukraine, growing tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea, extreme supply chain bottlenecks and an ongoing pandemic, to name a few," she said. "While, on the one hand, the stakes are high given the gravity of issues the G-20 is facing, on the other, expectations for any meaningful outcomes are quite low.

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"A good outcome for business would be if Biden uses these sessions to coordinate with allies on issues like supply chains, energy and food security," Shaw, an advisory board member of the Vandenberg Coalition, added. "It's also critical that Biden address inflation, debt and the global economic crisis."

Shaw speculated that "trade is largely off the table" for the Biden-Xi meeting with no meaningful discussion on tariffs expected. Instead, she believes the pair will discuss significant issues on security but could address Biden’s decision to cut off chip technology from China. 

"I have no doubt it will come up in their discussions, but I don’t expect Biden to pare it back," Shaw said. 

Singleton argued that China’s current policies, for which Xi and Beijing have shown no sign of reconsideration, may make it difficult for U.S. companies to continue doing business in the country. 

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"Regardless of what occurs in Bali at the G-20, Xi’s intensifying focus on economic statism and his refusal to meaningfully relax China’s zero-COVID strategy will greatly challenge U.S. multinationals operating in China, leading many to reconsider current and planned investments," he said. 

Gordon Chang, a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and author of "The Great U.S.-China Tech War," told FOX Business that the meeting shouldn’t even happen, arguing it will prove counterproductive since it remains unclear what a dialogue with China can achieve at this point. 

"We've had these discussions now for five decades. Biden and Xi-Jinping have had five phone or video conferences. … I think it's now time for the United States to impose costs on China for clearly unacceptable behavior, and further talking is only going to delay the imposition," Chang said. 

Chang said Beijing has "trotted out its phrases" that say "dialogue is an important win" and a "win for cooperation" but noted that Chinese officials have twice this year now cut off dialogue with Washington. 

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"Obviously, China is critical to the resolution for the world's major problems, but that doesn't mean that we need to talk to China about them," Chang argued. "We've had an approach which sounds good to the ear but which has failed over the course of decades, so it's up to us to change that approach."