Donald Trump in the Forbidden City

American President Donald Trump's first summit with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in April this year in Florida produced a lot of warm and fuzzy rhetoric but no big win for the former real estate magnate. The best thing one could say about the encounter at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort is that it allayed, at least temporarily, the fear that the new president elected on a protectionist agenda would carry out his threat of imposing punitive tariffs on Chinese imports and destroy the economic foundations of the world's most important bilateral relationship.