President Donald Trump on Thursday responded to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s comments about the “Thucydides Trap” during a state visit, in which Xi appeared to reference the political theory that dominant powers’ fear of a rising power could lead to war.
Trump claimed that his opponents were not saying that the United States was a “declined country” currently, but that it was during the tenure of former President Joe Biden.
Kenny Holston/Pool/AFP via Getty Images – Photo: President Donald Trump shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 14, 2026.
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“The world has reached a new crossroads. Can China and the United States overcome the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and create a new paradigm for major power relations,” Xi Jinping said in his opening speech on Wednesday, according to real-time translation reports.
“When President Xi very elegantly said that America may be a nation in decline, he was referring to the tremendous damage we have suffered over four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden administration, and in that regard, he is 100 percent correct,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Thursday.
There was no clear indication that Xi was referring to Biden in his statement.
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Trump later added, “In fact, President Xi congratulated me on having achieved so many great successes in such a short period of time. Two years ago, we were actually a declining country. I totally agree with President Xi on that! But now, the United States is the hottest country in the world, and hopefully our relationship with China will be stronger and better than ever!”
The “Thucydides Trap” in political science essentially means that declining countries should learn to accept rising countries, otherwise they will face a dangerous collision process. Xi Jinping’s metaphor seems to say that China is rising and the United States is declining.
The term was coined by Harvard professor Graham Allison to refer to the struggle between the Greek powers Athens and Sparta during the Peloponnesian War. The name is a nod to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear it instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.”