President Trump's trip to Beijing this week centers on securing a major Chinese investment pledge, but the push faces deep domestic resistance. While Trump has touted nearly $20 trillion in foreign investment commitments during his second term, Chinese investment in the U.S. collapsed to less than $3 billion in 2025 — down from a peak of roughly $45 billion in 2016 — reflecting tightening restrictions and growing political opposition.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, accompanying Trump, described efforts to create an investment board that would guide Chinese capital into acceptable sectors and streamline reviews by the Committee on Foreign Investment. Yet bipartisan congressional legislation now seeks to ban Chinese purchases of U.S. farmland entirely, and state-level restrictions are expanding.

The obstacles are not just regulatory. Chinese clean energy investments have unraveled — more than half of post-2022 projects were canceled, paused, or delayed. A proposed $2.4 billion battery factory by Gotion in Michigan was scrapped after community backlash and legal challenges. Steel associations and defense hawks continue pressing the administration to block Chinese autos from entering the U.S. market altogether.

Getting a deal done will require navigating a minefield that Trump's own advisers acknowledge remains unresolved. Michael Pillsbury, a China scholar who has served as an outside adviser to the administration, acknowledged that the "red lines have moved back and forth" as technology evolves, making it difficult to build any consensus around a safe investment framework.