China and the US can make nice, if not peace
Outright enmity is too costly for both superpowers. Even without trust, shared interests leave room for pragmatic cooperation
Washington and Beijing have spent nearly a decade trading tariffs, export controls and blacklists, with each round threatening rupture. Yet they keep recovering from the brink.
As the two presidents met at the White House this week, that pattern was repeating. Simply put, decoupling is proving ruinously expensive on both sides: two-way goods and services trade fell 25.1 per cent last year to an estimated US$494.6 billion, with American goods exports to China down 26 per cent.
