When Xi Jinping first met Donald Trump back in 2017, the Chinese leader said they had “a thousand reasons to make the China-U.S. relationship a success, and not a single reason to break it.”
Two years on, ties are at their lowest point in decades -- and they appear to be worsening by the day. Trump’s threat to raise tariffs on all Chinese goods last week shattered a truce reached with Xi just weeks earlier, unleashing tit-for-tat actions on trade and currency policy that risk accelerating a wider geopolitical fight between the world’s biggest economies.
A big part of the problem is that neither leader believes the other is serious about making a deal: China sees Trump as posturing ahead of the 2020 election, while U.S. officials think Xi is looking to wait him out for a better deal. Either way, the political space for compromise is diminishing as hardliners take center stage, prompting investors to weigh the potential economic fallout.
