On Thursday, President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, greeted each other during the first U.S. presidential visit to China in nearly a decade with a long handshake.
For two world leaders in a high-stakes summit, this was not just a common professional courtesy –– it was also a way of sizing the other up. Handshakes can foreshadow what’s on someone’s mind, according to experts.
“They’re telling you how they’re going to deal with you and what they think,” said Traci Brown, a body language expert and behavior analyst.
Body language analysts told HuffPost they were struck by the differences between how Trump greeted Xi, compared to past world leaders. “Trump usually does his ‘yank-and-grab,’ and he didn’t do that this time,” Brown said. “He was, this time, either more respectful or trying to show less power –– that’s the biggest thing.”
Trump is known for pulling people toward him when he shakes their hands. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Trump in Washington, D.C., for example, he manhandled Zelensky and put his arm around him, and when he bid farewell to French President Emmanuel Macron, Trump briefly knocked Macron off balance in his 25-second handshake. But that did not happen here.
