Trump’s days of running US-China relations on personal ties are numbered

Amid attempts this year to impress each other with splendour, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping appear to have decided that the relationship between their two countries should primarily run through their personal relationship. This has been a hallmark of the Trump years. The American executive branch has always held near-unilateral authority over foreign policy, but Trump has concentrated that in himself. Dozens of ambassadors and senior national security advisers have...