SATURDAY WRAP-UP

The Saturday Wrap-Up - Trump Walked Into China and Killed Kissinger's Thucydides Trap - May 16, 2026

Susan Kokinda dissects Trump's China summit — the unprecedented CEO delegation, denuclearization talks with Xi, and Trump's rejection of Taiwan war-mongering. The British-cooked "Thucydides Trap" narrative is being dismantled by Trump's revival of the American System.

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SUSAN KOKINDA

SATURDAY

•  Susan Kokinda analyzes President Trump's May 14 post responding to Xi Jinping's remarks about the "Thucydides Trap," arguing media coverage framed the U.S. as declining while Trump asserted America's renewed strength. She says the summit's real significance was Trump bringing an unprecedented delegation of top U.S. CEOs into the bilateral meeting and including the Defense Secretary, breaking a post-1972 pattern. Kokinda highlights Trump raising denuclearization directly with Xi and rejecting war-driven "geopolitical trigger points," including on Taiwan, emphasizing avoiding a distant war. She contends the Thucydides Trap concept popularized by Graham Allison is British-influenced "fake history" that obscures imperial manipulation, and claims Trump is dismantling that paradigm by reviving the American System—tariffs, manufacturing, and energy independence.