The truce between the two leaders shows that the price of confrontation was proving too high for the US

When Donald Trump launched his trade war against China in April, threatening tariffs as high as 145%, the Chinese government said it would never bow to blackmail and vowed to "fight to the end".

- Patrick Wintour

The question now is whether the consensus reached between Trump and Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, yesterday means that the fight really has come to an end, and if so, on whose terms.

Trump rated it as a 12 out of 10 meeting. Both sides have taken some of their biggest guns off the table, but this appears closer to a truce than a durable peace setting stable boundaries for China's relations with the US.

Nevertheless, the outline of a broader long-term diplomatic relationship is visible, with announced reciprocal visits by each leader within a year. That is very different from what China hawks in Congress were hoping for when Trump came to power, and will set alarm bells ringing among Republicans and Democrats.

One of the difficulties has been that Trump's strategic objectives in launching the trade war were not articulated - the balance between protecting traditional US manufacturing, ringfencing technology-based industries critical to US national security, punishing Chinese trade practices or, more broadly, overpowering China as a competitive threat generally, was fudged. Gradually the battle morphed in some minds in the US administration from a trade war into a geopolitical trial of strength between the two world superpowers, with the whole world awaiting the outcome.

As a result it has been a turbulent six months, involving undulating tariffs, export curbs, threats, counter threats, deferral and monopolies inquiries, interspersed with five rounds of trade talks in Madrid, London, Geneva, Stockholm and Kuala Lumpur, culminating in two hours of direct talks between Trump and Xi, their first meeting since 2019.