US President Donald Trump scored Thursday’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a 12 out of 10, but analysts were less bullish.
As part of the trade truce, Washington lowered tariffs in exchange for China freeing up rare earth export controls and buying more US soybeans. Both sides did not want a decoupling and strived to preserve the status quo with a “temporary patch-up,” a former CIA China analyst said: “Nobody had the upper hand,” a Eurasia Group expert concurred.
Still, Xi walked away having proven China’s “capacity to hit back,” The New York Times wrote, while Trump “backed down from a fight… that would have been too costly for the US,” Semafor’s Andy Browne argued.
