The Chinese and American economies largely depend on trade with one another. But relations between the two nations have been in an especially precarious state lately. Tingshu Wang/Reuters

Financial markets kicked off the week by gleefully cheering the weekend’s headlines that trade talks between the United States and China went smoothly. Just weeks earlier, Trump had threatened to impose a 100% tariff on Chinese exports and said he might call off a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Now, that meeting looks set to take place this week.

If all that seems like a rerun of a movie we’ve seen before but no one quite remembers how it ends, that’s because it never really did.

The rare-earth chokehold

The latest escalation between Trump and Xi arose after Beijing announced plans t

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