President Donald J. Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He on their way to the signing of the U.S.-China Phase One Trade Agreement at the White House in January. Credit: Shealah Craighead, Official White House Photo
After a year of pressure on Beijing, including levying tariffs on half of everything China sold to the United States, the American trade team thought it was closing in on a deal in late April 2019 to remake relations between the world’s two economic superpowers.
The two sides were working on a 150-page agreement covering many American complaints against China: pressure on U.S. companies to transfer technology, weak intellectual property protection, closed financial services markets, and currency devaluation. By some counts, the text required China to make at least sixty specific changes in its legal system.
Although China still hadn’t agreed to many U.S. demands, the two sides had already started discussions about where to hold a signing ceremony. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida? Washington, D.C.?
But the U.S. side was naively optimistic and made several miscalculations about the power of the United States to force China to change — the first of
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