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.

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.

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: This meeting between Trump and Xi was the most anticipated of the year. The two leaders of the two biggest economies meeting for the first time in six years, with immense consequences for the whole world. There was a wide spectrum of potential outcomes here, from awful to good. What was your big takeaway?

Elizabeth Economy: It ended up on the side of good more than awful. We pretty much knew the outlines of this trade deal because [U.S.] Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent telegraphed the range of small deals that would be struck prior.

It is a great relief to have the two leaders meet, to inject a little bit more stability into the bilateral relationship. But on the other hand, it’s also a little embarrassing for the Trump administration because the outcome of the meeting was that it managed to dig itself out of the hole that it had created when it first launched the trade war eight months ago. It’s great that the two leaders came together to reset the trade table, but it basically took us back to the pre-Trump trade-war status quo, with a few small exceptions around fentanyl and a possible TikTok deal.

RA: On his way back to Amer