What Trump said

If you know, China has come down tremendously. Tremendously. China would have superseded us in two years as an economic power; now, they’re not even close.

This is exaggerated.

It’s true that China’s growth is slowing. The economy expanded 6.5 percent in the three months that ended in September, the slowest pace in almost a decade. (Those are the official numbers, at least. Many economists believe Beijing’s statistics are implausibly smooth and do not square with outside estimates.)

But even if China’s growth rate hadn’t slowed, the country was hardly about to eclipse the United States in two years. Last year, Chinese economic output totaled $12.2 trillion, according to the World Bank. The American economy’s output totaled $19.4 trillion. Assuming the two economies kept growing at last year’s rates, it would still take around a decade for China to surpass the United States.

What Trump said

China got rid of their “China ’25” because I found it very insulting. I said that to them. I said, “China ’25” is very insulting, because “China ’25” means, in 2025, they’re going to take over, economically, the world. I said, “That’s not happening.”

False.

President Trump is presumably referring to Made in China 2025, a 2015 government plan for modernizing Chinese manufacturers through state support and intervention. The Trump administration has repeatedly held up the plan as evidence that China unfairly privileges its own companies over foreign competitors in the Chinese market. The administration says its tariffs against China are intended in part to compel Beijing to change these practices.

Perhaps in response to all the attention the plan has received, Chinese officials have lately stopped mentioning Made in China 2025 by name. News outlets have been ordered to keep it out of their stories.