What's a self-imagined dealmaker extraordinaire to do when there's no good deal to be had?
This is the quandary facing America's dealmaker-in-chief, Donald Trump. He's dispatched a high-level U.S. trade delegation — it includes Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow — to Beijing to avert a trade war with China. But when that group returns to Washington after this week's talks with their Chinese counterparts, they almost certainly won't have struck any sort of meaningful agreement, or even have assembled the outline of one.
The reason is simple: No good deal is truly possible amid America and China's escalating competition to be the technological leader and thus leading economic and military superpower of the 21st century. So what will Trump do?
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