'A perfect storm': Trump, Xi make big bets in trade war that may backfire

For Trump, the bet is that a hard-line stance on China will help him win another four years; the political calculations for Xi are harder to grasp, given the secretive nature of the Communist Party

When Xi Jinping first met Donald Trump back in 2017, the Chinese leader said they had "a thousand reasons to make the China-US relationship a success, and not a single reason to break it."

Two years on, ties are at their lowest point in decades -- and they appear to be worsening by the day. Trump's threat to raise tariffs on all Chinese goods last week shattered a truce reached with Xi just weeks earlier, unleashing tit-for-tat actions on trade and currency policy that risk accelerating a wider geopolitical fight between the world's biggest economies.

A big part of the