By Antoni Slodkowski, John Irish and Tom Balmforth
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 24 (Reuters) – While world leaders gather at the United Nations for their annual diplomatic ritual, the two biggest power brokers in global politics will sit down in a different venue on Thursday: the White House.
US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will meet for the second time this year, hoping to keep the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship steady as both leaders grapple with a host of domestic and global issues.
The split-screen moment highlights an existential question for the UN: does the world body, established after the calamity of two world wars, still matter?
While UN delegates discuss “multilateralism” and hold panels on the world’s conflicts, Trump and Xi – what the US president calls the “G2” – will talk AI, trade and defense.
“It’s pretty notable that Xi Jinping is coming to Washington in the same week as the General Assembly, but does not feel bothered to come up to New York,” said Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group.
“I think a lot of people will say, ‘Where is the real center of decision-making?'”
Xi rarely travels to New York for the General Assembly.
The questions about the UN’s role are hardly new, but have acquired fresh urgency as the organization struggles with deep financial problems, divisions among major powers and limited influence over conflicts from Ukraine to the Middle East.
Those concerns have gained new relevance since Trump’s return to office last year. The US leader has pulled the US out of dozens of UN agencies and slashed Washington’s budgetary contributions to the organization, pushing it to the brink of bankruptcy.
In his speech on Tuesday, Trump accused the UN of “imposing the far-left agenda of globalist bureaucrats who nobody ever elected.”
DEEPENING WOES
The UN has a persistent budget shortfall, forcing it to cut the budget of its Secretariat by 9.2% for 2026. It laid off thousands of staff, sent peacekeepers home and cut back on humanitarian and human rights work.
The United States, which has for years withheld much of its dues, is part of that problem.
The Trump administration last week paid $725 million for the regular budget, preserving its vote at the assembly, but still owes $1.3 billion to the regular budget and $2.9 billion for peacekeeping operations, the UN said.
The organization’s problems extend beyond money, however.
Gridlock has long defined the UN Security Council, where five veto powers including China, Russia and the US rarely agree on anything substantive.
“There are two main challenges that the UN faces today: the first is its dire financial situation,” said Eugene Chen, a former UN official.
“This is linked to a second, broader, challenge – the fact that member states no longer agree on what the form or function of the UN ought to be at a time of mounting global challenges,” he said.
Outgoing Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched a reform task force last year, known as UN80, which seeks to cut costs, remove duplication, move jobs to locations cheaper than New York and Geneva and improve efficiency.
It includes a 21% reduction in posts at the Secretariat and a review of more than 600 series of mandated Secretary-General’s reports, aiming to reduce reporting by about 700,000 words in 2026.
‘CRAVEN HYPOCRITES’
Unlike in 2025, Trump did not use his Tuesday speech to complain about escalators or teleprompters and largely stuck to a script that focused on defending his record in the war with Iran and on the US economy.
Still, he inveighed against the “craven hypocrites” of the UN’s Human Rights Council who “want America to open our borders to gangs and criminals from the world’s most dangerous places,” and zeroed in on UNESCO, saying “these globalists are actively destroying the greatest cultures and most extraordinary heritage in history.”
The UN has defended culture and education agency UNESCO’s work as “unanimously acclaimed by major specialized organizations,” and the Human Rights Council as playing “a very important role in the promotion and protection of human rights worldwide.”
Xi has sought to capitalize on Trump’s often bellicose rhetoric by presenting China as a reliable partner on the global stage, especially for developing nations, and by using the UN as a platform to advance that message.
1,000 MEETINGS
For all the criticism of the UN, its annual meeting remains a forum for high-volume diplomacy. This week, member states planned more than 1,000 bilateral meetings, according to UN data.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner communicated through mediators on the sidelines on Tuesday, the first such contacts since an interim ceasefire agreement collapsed in July.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters the UN remained relevant, but she too criticized the organization for being “paralyzed when it comes to preventing or ending conflicts.”
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy used the venue to hold talks with Trump on ending the war with Russia, including a potential ceasefire on energy-related targets.
He was asked by a journalist whether years of meetings at the UN have brought any concrete results. He answered in English: “Today it helps us to meet. Maybe it’s not too much, but it’s something.”
(Reporting by Antoni Slodkowski, John Irish and Tom Balmforth; Editing by Don Durfee and Howard Goller)
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