With the leaders of the United States and China set to meet this week, experts say this is the best time for President Xi Jinping to negotiate. The US is busy with wars in the Middle East, and President Donald Trump’s approval rating is cratering at home: he is desperate for a win, which could give China the upper hand.Trade between the world’s two largest economies has been disrupted since Trump returned to office last year and unleashed a series of tariffs on the world, imposing some of the highest rates on China, 145 percent at one point.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listBeijing retaliated with its own tariffs and halted the exports of rare earth metals, an essential component for a range of industries, including cars and smartphones, and which China has a monopoly in.While things have eased slightly since the peak of that freeze, they are far from normal.“Trade relations really, really deteriorated. US imports from China fell by more than 25 percent and exports to China fell by 25 percent or more. Those are huge numbers in one year,” said Chad Bown, the Reginald Jones senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE).“There doesn’t seem to be any floor to how bad the relationship is.”By one estimate, US exports to China would have been nearly 60 percent higher in 2025, …
