The US-China trading relationship will be fraught for years to come

OVER THENAFTADC past two years investors and executives watching the trade tensions between America and China have veered between panic and nonchalance. Hopes for a cathartic deal that would settle the countries’ differences have helped global stockmarkets rise by a bumper 13% this year. But on May 5th that confidence was detonated by a renewed threat by President Donald Trump to impose more tariffs on Chinese imports. As went to press negotiations rumbled on, but no one should be under any illusions. Even if a provisional agreement is eventually struck, the deep differences in the two countries’ economic models mean their trading relations will be unstable for years to come.Some trade spats are settled by landmark agreements. In the 1980s tensions between Japan and America were resolved by the Plaza Accord. In September Mr Trump agreed to replace , which governs America’s trade with Canada and Mexico, with a renamed but otherwise rather similar accord (although the new treaty has yet to be ratified by Congress). Even by those standards the China talks have been an epic undertaking involving armies of negotiators shuttling between Beijing and Washington, , for months on end. Yet they have never looked capable of producing the decisive change in China’s economic model that many in Washington crave.