An Interview with Graham Allison on a Trump-Xi Deal

It is hard not to know Graham Allison’s work in the U.S.-China field, but, if you are unfamiliar with the Harvard political scientist, you will still have come across the key concept from his 2014 book Destined for War. This concept, the Thucydides trap, describes a historical tendency Allison finds for war between an established hegemonic power and a new, rising power. Thucydides remains on the lips of many Chinese international relations scholars, political scientists, and officials 11 years after the book’s initial publication. The goal, one Allison shares, is to discover a way to avoid conflict between the United States and China.

Recently, Allison has been a rare hopeful voice that Washington and Beijing can find a way to live together and that conflict is not inevitable.

Miranda Wilson spoke with Allison, asking him if he still sees hope 8 months into Trump’s second administration. He does.

Miranda Wilson: In February of this year, you wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post arguing that President Trump might not be as much of a China hawk as his administration and his claims that he “loves China” and thinks “President Xi is brilliant” are true. You conclude, “I am betting that by this time next year, we will all be surprised on the upside by what has happened in U.S.-China relations.” Five months later, do you still hold the same opinion?

Graham Allison: In short, yes. If one were writing an analogue of The Tale of Two Cities as The Tale of Two Futures, the easier of the two would foresee the worse of times: a relationship driven by structural factors to increasing suspicion, hostility and ultimately a catastrophic conflict. If Thucydides were watching, I suspect he would say the US and China are right on script, almost as if they were competing to show who could better exemplify the role of the rising or ruling power. Watching the past decade or two, Thucydides would be sitting on the edge of his chair anticipating the greatest collision of all time. In the last couple of years of his life before he died in 2023, my teacher and mentor Henry Kissinger and I would have a Zoom meeting every month or so. Among the topics we would discuss each time was the US relationship with China. And every time he would end that part of the conversation by saying, “Graham, I’m hearing louder and louder the echoes of 1914.” Remember: that was the outcome of the rivalry between a rapidly rising Germany and Great Britain that created conditions in which the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo ignited a fire that within five weeks had engulfed all of Europe in a catastrophic war.

Nonetheless, as I wrote in the Post piece, for the immediate future, I’m still betting against the structural trend-lines. My bet is that in the next several months we will all be surprised on the upside. Yes, I’m stretching for optimism and grasping for silver linings. But for the near future, I’m betting that it is more likely than not we’ll be surprised. That bet is based on my attempt to understand both Presidents Trump and Xi, to read carefully what they have said, weigh each leader’s assessment of his own interests, and analyze the logic of the situation. Combining all that, I make the odds as better than even that when they meet in October or November, Trump and Xi will announce the foundation of a more positive relationship between the US and China. And that’s the thrust of my recent piece in Foreign Policy.

MW: Well, that’s certainly good to hear. What do you think such an “upside” could look like?

GA: It will start with an announcement by Trump that the August 12 deadline for a trade deal with China, after which tariffs are raised again, will be extended for another 90 days. It’s clear from Trump’s statements about Secretary Bessent “feeling very good” after negotiations with He Lifeng in Stockholm that they’ve reached a substantial level of agreement already on tariff and trade issues and probably on the more sensitive semiconductor and rare earth export control issues.

Second, China has been making a really serious push in its anti-fentanyl campaign, including cracking down on two more fentanyl precursors after a meeting between our outstanding new Ambassador to Beijing David Perdue and China’s Minister of Public Security, Wang Xiaohong. Fentanyl is an issue President Trump really cares about. It is personal for a number of the members of his administration, one of whom lost a son to an overdose of a related opioid drug. I believe they’ll report progress on that front, and perhaps a reduction in the 20% tariff Trump imposed to give China more incentive to act on that issue.

I think there’ll be a resolution of the TikTok issue. Despite the fact that China Super Hawks insist TikTok is an unacceptable national security threat to the United States, a hundred and some million Americans like TikTok, including Trump. As he’s said, he has a “warm spot in his heart for TikTok.” So the two governments will come to an acceptable agreement, though they’re still haggling over details. The resolution will reflect President Trump’s approach to risks posed by China: recognizing that every entanglement with China creates risks. The art of the relationship is managing these risks to ensure that the benefits outweigh the costs.

If we look at the trade talks with other counties and what the Trump Administration calls “deals,” many of the specifics are fuzzy, the terms are on a long time horizon, and few of the details are agreed to in writing. If I promise to buy a bridge from you in 35 years, unless the details are written down in a contract with collateral in case I walk away from my pledge, how much is my promise worth? Recall the $550 billion Trump said Japan promised to invest in the US. The press has subsequently reported that this is an upper limit, not a “target or commitment,” according to Japan’s negotiator. So, this invites a version of commitment kabuki theater—big numbers that produce headline announcements with pledges that aren’t likely to be kept. In that vein, I suspect Xi will agree for China to buy considerably more American oil, gas, and agricultural products to reduce the bilateral trade deficit by several hundred billion dollars over several years. Since for Trump bilateral trade deficits are an important target, I could even imagine Xi holding out the prospect of zeroing out the trade deficit before Trump leaves office.

As long as I’m offering my “I have a dream” tale of the future, three more items. I’m betting the Trump-Xi summit will happen before Thanksgiving, most likely just before the APEC meeting at the end of October in Korea. I suspect Trump and Xi will go beyond what Trump may call the “greatest deal of all time” and announce a “great rebalancing” in which Chinese consumers buy more from the US and American companies sell more to China. And about the larger geostrategic relationship, again stretching our minds, it’s possible that they will announce the foundation of a new relationship or even partnership.

A caveat, however. If you remember when Biden was advancing towards what he hoped would much more positive relationship with China, lo and behold in the sky a spy balloon appeared—setting the US-China relationship off on a different course for almost a year. So as with all international affairs, forecasts are always at risk of unknown and unpredictable events.

MW: Why has Trump’s strategy towards China been so contradictory and aggressive (especially his threat of tariffs over 100%) if the ultimate outcome will be positive?

GA: What set him off on the hyper tariffs that ultimately reached 145%—which his Secretary of the Treasury aptly described as an “embargo?” I don’t know. Trump is erratic, unpredictable, stays up half the night, and tweets ideas or impulses that come into his head whenever his spirits move him. In a project I lead here at Harvard called “Taking Trump Seriously,” we’ve been trying to analyze him as a political phenomenon. Whatever else one thinks about him, one has to begin with the fact that he managed the greatest political comeback in the history of the American republic. An individual whom all the pundits had declared politically dead and who would by now likely be in jail had he not won last November defied all expectations. However discombobulated he makes one, this did not happen by accident. There is clearly method in his madness. As a practicing Applied Historian, I resist the word unprecedented because I start with a presumption against there being anything entirely new under the sun. But Trump is certainly unusual. He takes pride in being unpredictable. He enjoys seeing people outraged because they become emotional, which makes them uncomfortable, and allows him to push them further. It’s part of his bargaining strategy.

Consider his global trade war. He has successfully bullied most countries into accepting higher US tariffs on products they are selling to Americans without them increasing their tariffs on American goods. But in confronting China, he failed to appreciate the relative strengths of the US and Chinese economies, and to see how prepared Xi and his colleagues were for a trade war. While most leaders of countries on whom he imposed tariffs basically just rolled over, Xi responded immediately by imposing equivalent tariffs on American goods, eventually reaching 125% tariffs. Before long, Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent (from South Carolina) and others were telling him, “Hey, have you thought about what this is going to do to the U.S. economy?” In the face of Mr. Market, especially rising bond yields, Trump concluded that his best choice was to back down. Instructively, when Trump hits a wall, while he may not give up his objective, he at least retreats and tries to find an alternative path on which to pursue it.

China’s preparedness for economic warfare became even clearer when the US began tightening controls on advanced semiconductors and equipment to make them. When the negotiations about strangling supply chains began, Secretary Bessent dismissed his Chinese counterpart with the comment: he’s coming to the table with “a pair of deuces.” After having lost 4 successive hands in negotiations with China, Bessent and Trump now know better. When China essentially stopped exporting rare earth magnets, Trump and others in his administration immediately got phone calls from the CEO of Ford Motor Company, Tesla, the companies who make the F-35, Tomahawk and Patriot Missiles, and many more. Rare earth magnets are essential to almost all electronics, all advanced weapons systems, automobiles, and thousands of other items. The question Trump and Bessent had failed to ask is: who makes almost all—90% plus—of the rare earth magnets on which American production lines depend?

Indeed, the US retreat was so obvious that the Financial Times journalist Robert Armstrong coined a new acronym TACO—Trump Always Chickens Out—that has now become popular in describing US-China faceoffs. It’s an exaggeration. But it does capture what the Trump Team has been doing when they find themselves negotiating with the single opponent who has a stronger hand than they do. And as JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has noted, that’s the right response in those conditions.

Since China is dependent on the US for many items that are essential for its economy, in the supply chain conflict, we may see the emergence of an analogue of what the strategic community would call mutual deterrence. Both countries have to consider how the other will retaliate before taking actions that impose costs on it.

MW: You have taught at Harvard for five decades. What are your thoughts on the current administration’s revocation of international students’visas at your institution? Do you see such policies impacting U.S.-China relations in any major ways?

GA: In a word, I think this initiative is dumb. It is counterproductive. It reflects the darker side of our culture—a defeatist strand that has lost confidence in our ability to compete. By contrast, I start with a faith-based belief that the US embodies the greatest hopes of mankind. As the saying goes: God looks after drunks, little children, and the USA. Among this country’s greatest strengths is its ability to attract the most talented individuals from all over the world and give them the opportunity to realize their dreams. Who has driven the US rise over the past century to predominance in science and technology? Super intellects like Einstein, Szilard, and Fermi who were NOT born in America, came to the US, and allowed us to build the atomic bombs used to win World War II. Who created the semiconductor industry? A Hungarian refugee Andy Grove who founded and built a great company called Intel. Who founded Tesla, Starlink, and SpaceX? A South African named Elon Musk.

Recently Nvidia became the most valuable company in the world with a market cap of $4 trillion. The person who built Nvidia, Jensen Huang, was born in Taiwan. In Huang’s view, “50% of all the AI talent in the world is in China.” Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is currently trying to assemble a team of super intellects and has produced a hit list of stars to whom he has been offering $100 million plus signing bonuses. Of the 11, all of whom are now American citizens, how many were born in China? Seven. Of the remaining 4 how many were born in the US? Zero. Among Chinese who come to the United States to get a PhD in STEM fields, how many are working here in American companies five years later? 80%.

If we were serious about strengthening our sustainable advantages, we should not only be providing visas, we should be recruiting stars the way basketball teams recruit talent. Eric Schmidt and I offered a plan for that in what we called a “Million Talents Program” that you can find by Googling.

MW: In June, you met with Foreign Minister Wang Yi. How was that meeting?

GA: Interesting. I’ve had the good fortune to meet with him several times. But the meeting and conversation were private.

What I will say about it and the meetings I have had with a number of other Chinese leaders is that they are seriously interested in Thucydides’s trap and how to escape. In part, this is because Xi Jinping himself is very interested in the topic. Indeed, he was the first international leader to comment on the idea. Back in 2014 after I had published an essay version of the analysis developed in Destined for War: Can the US and China Escape Thucydides Trap? Xi said: “We all need to work together to avoid the Thucydides Trap.” My analysis was complementary to an idea he had been developing that he called a “New Model of Great Power Relations.”

In China today, when President Xi is interested in an idea, so are the rest of the Politburo. The fact that a Greek thinker whom many of them did not know much about who was roughly a contemporary of Confucius, had identified a pattern in history from which we could learn, they find compelling. My conversations with them have often been like a seminar where they ask about my understanding of Thucydides, his book, his insights, and particularly the dynamics of a Thucydidean rivalry—and offer me their views. They are particularly interested in how to escape Thucydides’s trap—and since that’s the issue I’ve been struggling with since I sent the book to the publisher seven years ago, I’ve learned a lot from them about that.

A Chinese think tank called the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing produced a book titled Escaping Thucydides’s Trap, in which they took all of the speeches, articles, and other pieces I’ve done since the book and arranged them as answers to questions as part of the continuing conversation. That has also been grist for many of these conversations.

As he has been thinking about how to escape Thucydides’s trap, Xi uses the phrase: “I am in you, and you are in me.” In a 2023 meeting with Senator Chuck Schumer and a delegation, Xi suggested that in conceptualizing relations between our two nations we should recognize that: “I am in you and you in me.” For me to survive, I have to work with you; for you to survive, you have to work with me. In Chinese, the phrase comes from a Yuan Dynasty poem. In English, it basically means thick interdependence.

This is similar to a metaphor that I’ve used comparing the US and China to inseparable conjoined Siamese twins. Two entities can be so entangled that neither can survive without the other. There’s a spectrum of symbiotic relationships in nature, ranging from relationships between organisms who help each other, like oxpeckers and zebras, to organisms who could not survive without the other, like the yucca moth and yucca plant.

Some of my Chinese interlocutors have suggested another concept based on a famous quote by Confucius: “Harmony Without Uniformity.” That’s a provocative thought. Is it possible to achieve a state of harmonious relations, despite, or even because of differences?

Americans tend to believe that every country should be a democracy like ours. Our Declaration of Independence asserts that all human beings have inalienable rights—not just Americans. The Chinese idea is different: people can hold contrary views, but they can still exist in harmony. Indeed, Chinese thought celebrates differences that are essential for a greater harmony, from yin and yang to males and females. As the Discourses of the States notes: “Harmony begets new life, while uniformity dooms itself to end.”

That concept rhymes with a provocative idea JFK proposed in the most important foreign policy speech of his career delivered just 5 months before he was assassinated. In the 1963 commencement address at American University, he declared that hereafter, the United States’ goal would be to build “a world safe for diversity.” Rather than demanding that the United States bury Soviet-led Communist totalitarianism, the United States should now live and let live—in a world of diverse political systems with diametrically opposed values and ideologies. In that world, the Free World and Evil Empire could compete vigorously—but only peacefully—to demonstrate whose values and system of governance could best meet the demands of its citizens.

So, Foreign Minister Wang Yi is actively thinking about how to build a relationship between two countries that know they will be classic Thucydidean rivals but live in a world in which each faces existential challenges it cannot meet without the cooperation of the other. I’ve been honored as a professor to be invited to engage in those conversations.

Henry Kissinger went to Beijing the summer before he died in 2023 and had a long meeting with Xi. When he came back, he debriefed me. I still recall vividly his bottom line. He said, “Xi is thinking more seriously about a ‘strategic concept’ both nations could embrace to stabilize this relationship than any political leader I’ve previously encountered.”

MW: What do you think? Do you think that mindset is the key to preventing Thucydides’s trap?

GA: Yes. I think JFK’s profound insight was that “in the final analysis, we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” For JFK, that insight required embracing simultaneously two contradictory imperatives: the necessity to compete with a Soviet Union whose core interests and goals were incompatible with the United States’ and the necessity to cooperate to prevent mutual destruction.

The US and China are locked in conditions defined by similar contradictory imperatives to compete and cooperate: to compete in the greatest rivalry of all time, and to cooperate for each to ensure its own survival. We all live on the same planet – neither of us is planning on going anywhere.

How can the US and China live on the same planet? The incentives to cooperate are compelling. We live in an era of nuclear MAD: mutual assured destruction. Both the US and China have nuclear arsenals that if used against the other would trigger retaliation that would destroy both of us. President Reagan’s insight that “a nuclear war cannot be won and therefore must never be fought” remains as true today as it was when he said it.

The Earth is a small planet with an enclosed biosphere. Whether emitted by the US or China, greenhouse gases have the potential to make our shared biosphere uninhabitable for all of us. So, we have a strong incentive to cooperate to prevent that.

The financial system is so entangled that in 2008, when we had a great financial crisis caused by Wall Street, we were rapidly sliding towards another Great Depression that could not have been prevented without the joint U.S.-China stimulus that reversed it.

Viruses, terrorists, and the array of transnational actors don’t respect borders. So, on the one hand, if we were sensible, we would recognize our survival requires working together. On the other hand, there’s no question this is going to be the fiercest Thucydidean rivalry in history.

So, can we respond to both imperatives at the same time? I’ve been searching for analogies in other areas of life and nature for clues. One promising arena is the world of business. Business schools teach a concept they call “co-opetition.” Two companies can be fierce competitors, while also cooperating.

Take Apple and Samsung: two great smartphone companies that internationally compete to be Number 1. In that race, they go back and forth—Samsung having taken the top spot for the last several years. But if we then ask who the biggest supplier of components for Apple’s smartphones is, it’s Samsung. Samsung is Apple’s fiercest competitor, but Apple is dependent on Samsung for its components. And if you ask Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, about this, he says: “Life is complicated.”

Life is complicated. Can the US and China come to a mature recognition that in this complicated relationship each has to cooperate with the other to ensure its own survival? While they hold contrary views about many issues and compete vigorously to be number one rather than number two, can they also coordinate and cooperate where that is necessary?

Consider the Olympics. As a fan, I cheer for the American team to win gold in every event. But I realize that China is going to win some of the events. And I also know that because the athletes are competing against each other, both run faster than they would if they were running by themselves. Indeed, if the countries were not cooperating in holding the Olympics, there would be no races in which the athletes could compete to be the best in the world. Analogies are only suggestive. But I think this one has promise. Remember the Olympic banner: stronger, faster, higher—together.