The United States appears to be on the ropes in trade negotiations with China. After taking office, the Trump administration threw down the gauntlet with Beijing, briefly imposing 145 percent tariffs in April 2025 and more than doubling its effective tariff rate on China to around 40 percent for much of the past year. Washington’s theory was that depriving China of the U.S. consumer would force Beijing to concede on market access and bringing down the bilateral trade deficit. At one point,