7 November 2025

How Beijing Views Trump A top China scholar and former Biden administration advisor on the Trump-Xi meeting and the future of the U.S.-China relationship

Ravi Agrawal

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Last week’s meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping was the most-anticipated summit between two world leaders this year. The presidents of the United States and China seem to have come away with things they can both describe as wins—and certainly, the two avoided their trade spat getting worse. But according to Elizabeth Economy, a China scholar and former advisor to the Biden administration, the agreement between the two sides was not only limited to just one year but also skirted around the more fundamental structural issues plaguing the relationship.

Economy is now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of, most recently, The World According to China. I asked Economy to join me as a guest on FP Live, and we discussed takeaways from the summit, how Beijing is navigating Trump’s second term, and how, on balance, countries in Asia are viewing the biggest superpower showdown this century. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

Ravi Agrawal is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy. X: @RaviReports

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