After U.S. President Donald Trump concluded a two-day diplomatic trip to China in May 2026, a rumor spread online claiming that U.S. officials dumped all gifts received from the Chinese delegation before boarding Air Force One to leave the country.
The claim circulated on X, YouTube (archived), Reddit and Instagram. Many of the posts (archived) claimed the U.S. delegation threw away items such as "commemorative souvenirs" and "gift bags."
This rumor originated from a May 14 X post (archived) by the New York Post's White House correspondent, Emily Goodin, who was on the plane with Trump as part of the White House press corps:
American staff took everything Chinese officials handed out - credentials, burner phones from WH staff, pins for delegation - collected them before we got on AF1 and threw them in a bin at bottom at stairs. Nothing from China allowed on the plane. We're taking off shortly for America
In a May 18 email, Goodin
"I don't know about any official gifts," Goodin said. "I asked the White House and never heard back."
There's no evidence disproving Goodin's report. Like Goodin, we sent inquiries to the White House for more details about what staff threw away and have not heard back as of this writing. As such, there is not enough information to rate this claim.
It's worth noting that images shared online appearing to show gifts stacked up in a bin outside Air Force One are fake and likely generated by artificial intelligence. If there were legitimate close-up images of a bin full of trashed Chinese gifts outside Air Force One — which there are not — those images would be widely available via reputable photojournalist databases such as Getty Images and the Associated Press photo archive.
White House pool reports
Goodin's report was given credence by White House pool reports, or detailed daily dispatches from the White House press corps tracking Trump's movements.
A May 15 pool report from Danny Kemp, a reporter with French-based global news agency AFP, said White House staff "asked us to hand over the little red lapel badges pool had been given to identify us, saying the Chinese wanted them back."
Another pool report by Kemp — filed just minutes later as the president climbed the steps to Air Force One to leave China — said, "US staff took all badges and pins issued by China from reporters. They then put them (and staff burner phones) in a bin, per co pooler Emily Goodin."
Gift-giving and espionage
As many online speculated, U.S. officials may have disposed of items given to Air Force One passengers due to security and espionage concerns, particularly given the United States government's adversarial relationship with China.
There's historical precedent for spying via gift-giving: In 1945, for example, Soviet children famously gave an American ambassador a hand-carved seal of the United States, which stayed in his office until 1952, when technicians discovered a listening device inside of it.
The Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act governs U.S. regulations for accepting and disposing of gifts as a federal employee. Per the act, as of this writing, federal employees cannot accept gifts from foreign entities worth more than $525.
Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly promised Trump that he would give him rose seeds from China for the White House Rose Garden. It was not clear how Xi planned to deliver those seeds to the White House. U.S. regulations require inspections of agricultural products such as seeds before they enter the country.