"Since the end of the Cold War, from President Bill Clinton to President Obama, the United States has been trying to remake the world in its own image — building an American empire in the name of globalization. Through ever larger and more complex alliances and global institutions that the United States designed, Washington has sought the global standardization of rules in trade, finance and international relations. It has used political, economic and military might to push other countries to adopt electoral democracy and market capitalism.
....... This approach is working for China. The Chinese economy continues to advance in both size and technological sophistication, so much so that China looms in the minds of many American elites as the most potent long-term threat.
But these elites fail to realize — and Mr. Trump appears to understand — that while they have been obsessed with the rise of China as a threat to the United States-led liberal order, America’s domestic political foundations have been decaying. The tendency of American elites to try to mold the world to their liking created a conflict in their own country, between Americans with power and ordinary people. The American empire was built at the expense of the American nation."
"Globalization has benefited those Americans at the top with concentrated wealth and influence while the middle class has stagnated or shrunk. The country’s industrial base, the economic bedrock of the middle class in the postwar era, has been shattered. America’s infrastructure is in disrepair, its education system badly underperforming, and its social contract in shambles.
There is no reason that we could not have a fair trade exchange with China. Well, other than the Chinese always trying to change the deal. But other than that, Trump is a businessman. The Chinese are businessmen. We can do business.
Xi understood early which way the American wind was blowing and set his sail to take what advantage he could.