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 Dozens of ambassadors and senior national security advisers have been replaced by Trump’s intuition, phone calls with other leaders and Truth Social posts that can redefine global alliances overnight.

Xi has built China’s strategic competition with the United States around that understanding. Beijing has largely operated on the assumption that Trump’s control of the Republican Party means he can deliver on any of the promises he makes.