China tries to squeeze more out of a small trade deal with America

THE TRADE conflict between China and America has been a clash not just of giant economies but of utterly different public negotiating styles. In one corner are President Donald Trump’s tweets, in which he veers between heaping praise on China and declaring that he has pummelled it. In the other is a Chinese bureaucracy that has stuck doggedly to the same message: tariffs must be removed for the two countries to reach a trade agreement. A mini-deal, hashed out last month, is shaping up to be a mini-test of their contrasting approaches.

The outline of the mini-deal—or, as Mr Trump put it, the “substantial phase-one deal”—seemed clear enough. China would buy American agricultural products, and America would hold back from slapping yet more tariffs on China. With this basic agreement under their belts, the two combatants would move onto weightier topics such as China’s support for its strategic industries. But two problems have since emerged: one predictable, one not.

As was foreseeable at the time, the lack of detail about the mini-truce concealed big differences. Mr Trump said that trade talks had been “a love fest”, and that China would buy $40bn-50bn in farm goods from America, more than double the level before the trade war. But the more he gloated, the more China appears to have seen an opening to push for more....