Dave Davies

For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.

This is Fresh Air.

I'm Dave Davies.

Day one of the summit in Beijing between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping yielded no substantive agreements.

But statements from the two sides following their first meeting reflected differing priorities.

While the U.S.

side emphasized hope for productive trading relationships between the countries, the Chinese statement warned that if the issue of Taiwan was not handled properly, it could put the U.S.-China relationship in quote, an extremely dangerous situation.

For some perspective on the issues that will frame further discussions, we turn to Rush Doshi, a China expert who worked on the National Security Council in the Biden administration.

He wrote last fall that when Trump launched his trade war against China in 2025, he mistook political theater for strategy, lost ground to his adversary, and made it clear that China now stands as America's true peer in geopolitical rivalry.

During his tenure at the National Security Council, though she coordinated U.S.

government policy on China and Taiwan, drafted the administration's China strategy and negotiated with Chinese counterparts.

He's now an assistant professor in Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, a senior fellow and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of The Long Game, China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order.

We recorded our interview yesterday.

Rush Doshi, welcome to Fresh Air.

You know, we read news about tariffs and trade wars, and it can be hard to follow, hard to see it in context, see how meaningful the latest move is.

But you had a remarkable piece a few months back about what happened in this trade war between the U.S.

and China.

And argued that there was a moment when China really proved that it was America's equal.

This was – it began in 2025 in the second Trump administration when President Trump began using tariffs, one of his favorite tools, and hit China particularly hard, imposing tariffs as high as 140 percent.

How did China respond?