BEIJING — President Trump’s $250 billion in Chinese business deals probably won’t be enough to stop a trade fight.

Mr. Trump met with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Beijing on Thursday, offering personal praise and qualified criticisms of China’s trade practices. China, in return, offered modest concessions on some thorny trade issues. The two sides also pointed to what they claimed were billions of dollars of deals between Chinese and American companies to show face-saving progress.

But behind the scenes, Washington and Beijing are gearing up for what may well be months of contentious relations between the world’s two largest trading partners.

After initially focusing this year on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement and the United States’ free-trade pact with South Korea, Trump administration officials plan to pursue previous promises to investigate what they call Chinese theft of American intellectual property. Lawmakers also plan to intensify scrutiny of Chinese investments in sensitive areas of the American economy.