May 5, 2018

Even by President Trump's unpredictable and bare-knuckles style of negotiating, his economic team's visit to Beijing in recent days to confront China on trade was both bewildering and, for many in both countries and beyond, worrisome.

Worrisome because the two-day meeting that concluded Friday showed that the U.S. and China are miles apart, making the threat of a trade war very real. There was no joint communique afterward or any official word on when, or whether, they would meet again.

And bewildering because the indications are that the two sides talked past each other, with Trump's high-level emissaries presenting an eight-point set of demands that analysts called so far-fetched that no country would accept it, let alone China — a rising superpower whose national pride is wrapped up in a historical narrative of overcoming century-long subjugation by foreign powers.

Read more:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-na-trump-china-trade-05062018-story.html