Meeting a foreign leader on the tarmac is not how US presidents usually handle arrivals, since the standard play is to stay at the White House and let the other side come to them. Trump and Melania took off from the new granite helipad at Andrews to go shake hands with Xi and Peng. Flip back to May, when Trump's plane landed in Beijing and Xi didn't bother walking out to greet him at the aircraft. For Xi, the last full White House state visit goes back to 2015. The schedule has a ceremony and a dinner coming up, with Elon, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and Jensen Huang listed as attendees, plus a flyover featuring a B-2 and four F-22s. Underneath the pageantry, trade and artificial intelligence are the topics that matter.