Have you been following the China trade deal? There are lots of pieces to this puzzle, but its been a story mainly about opaque Chinese politics rather than economics – but then I’ve always thought trade deals were 90% politics and 10% economics. While Trump has been saying that it amounts to a little squabble, the Chinese are calling ‘a people’s war‘.

There have always been powerful interests in China who were going to oppose ending subsidies, ending theft of intellectual property, and who wanted to continue a one-sided relationship. The best analysis I’ve seen is Gordon Chang’s “No Longer a Trade Tiff: China Screams ‘People’s War’“

“Most observers ignored, among other things, internal Chinese factors pushing Beijing away from agreement with the United States.”