U.S. President Donald Trump hailed a meeting with China’s Xi Jinping as “amazing” and “12” on a 10-point scale, but the agreement the two leaders reached appears to be no more than a fragile truce in a trade war with root causes still unresolved.

The framework announced on Thursday—that includes China resuming soybean purchases, suspending its rare earths export curbs for a year, and the U.S. lowering tariffs on China by 10%—broadly rewinds ties to the status that existed before Trump’s “Liberation Day” offensive triggered tit-for-tat escalation.

But the deal exposes the fundamental mismatch between what Washington wants and what Beijing is willing to offer. Absent from the talks were the big issues cited by Trump as he launched his tariffs in April—China’s industrial policies, manufactu

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