Despite Donald Trump and Xi Jinping’s G20 handshake, mistrust and disputes persist in US-China trade war
- Analysts on both sides agree leaders’ meeting in Osaka did little to alter the big picture for US-China relations
- Reprieve for Huawei may be encouraging, but ‘it may have little to do with actual change of heart in either side’s strategic calculus’, academic says
The meeting between Chinese and American leaders in Osaka may have pressed the pause button on their escalating trade war, but pundits on both sides remain doubtful about how long a ceasefire can avert a looming showdown between the two economic superpowers.
In what appeared to be another concession, Trump made a surprise announcement at a press briefing after his 80-minute meeting with Xi that effectively backtracked on a US ban on exports to Huawei, China’s top telecoms company.
The official Chinese account of what happened during the meeting, issued by Xinhua before Trump’s press conference, made no mention of the Huawei situation, which topped the list of Beijing’s demands before trade negotiations broke down in early May.
Among specialists and former diplomats, there is a clear sense of relief that Beijing and Washington have again managed to prevent their tit-for-tat tariff escalation from becoming a full-blown economic cold war, with a truce similar to what emerged from the Trump-Xi meeting at the G20 summit in Argentina seven months ago.
But they cast doubt over the prospect of a deal to end the near year-long trade war and said the fifth Xi-Trump summit, although better than expected, was more symbolic than successful in addressing the deepening trust deficit and other problems at the heart of the US-China stand-off.