Larry Summers said the best part of President Donald Trump’s first meeting in six years with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, was that it didn’t end in chaos.
In a Friday interview with Bloomberg, the former US Treasury secretary spoke about Thursday’s meeting between the two leaders in South Korea. The gathering resulted in a tariff truce, agreements on agriculture and rare earth minerals, and cooperation on fentanyl.
“I think the most important thing is what didn’t happen,” Summers said to Bloomberg. “This situation didn’t spiral out of control into massive confrontation and economic conflict.”
“It was managed in a way that avoided what potentially could have been very unfortunate and destabilizing outcomes, and that’s the good news, I think it genuinely is good news,” he added.
Summers told Bloomberg that several issues were not broached during the meeting, including technology and rising competition in artificial intelligence.
“But this is a book that’s got many chapters, and we are still in the early chapters,” he said about US-China relations.
The Trump-Xi meeting in Busan was the final stop on Trump’s Asia trip. It helped thaw tensions between the two superpowers, and markets were largely stable afterward.
Trump halved 20% tariffs on Chinese goods linked to fentanyl production after Xi agreed to a firmer curb on the flow of the drug into the US.
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Trump also announced that China had agreed to buy US soybeans, sorghum, and other agricultural goods, and to export rare earth minerals to the US.
In a fact sheet released on Saturday, the White House said that it would keep “reciprocal” tariffs on China paused for another year, until November 2026.
Speaking about his meeting with Xi and US-China relations during CBS’s “60 Minutes” episode released on Sunday, Trump said, “I think we get along very well.
“And I think we can be bigger, better, and stronger by working with them, as opposed to just knocking them out,” he said.
Representatives for Trump did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
