Before the meeting, an array of business groups issued a public letter seeking relief from China tariffs that they said cost American importers $110 billion and the average American household $1,300 in 2020.

"These costs, compounded by other inflationary pressure, impose a significant burden on American businesses, farmers, families trying to recover from the effects of the pandemic," wrote the business groups, which ranged from the American Soybean Association to the Information Technology Industry Council.

But White House officials said tariffs were not on the US agenda.

After Biden and Xi talked for more than three hours, and with the White House battered politically by the highest inflation in decades, no policy shift was announced.

Taking office after the violent, Trump-incited January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, Biden has framed his presidency as an opportunity for the US to prove that democracies can out-compete authoritarian regimes such as China in the 21st century.

On issues from human rights to Taiwan to the coronavirus, interactions between the world's two most powerful nations have grown so pointed that Biden cast the summit as an attempt to ensure that competition "does not veer into conflict."

Yet he still faces Republican accusations of weakness on China policy, a staple of Trump's 2020 campaign.