This year’s most startling meeting of minds has been the rise of an anti-China consensus in the US. It spans Donald Trump’s White House and Congress, Republicans and Democrats, business and unions, globalists and populists. America may be at war with itself on almost everything else. But it is uniting on fear of China.
Standing up to Beijing is the sole issue on which Democrats are often to the right of Mr Trump. “They need us more than we need them,” said Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, last summer in praise of the president’s punitive China tariffs.
The coming year will put Mr Schumer’s claim to the test. Even if Mr Trump strikes a truce with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, when they meet next month, cross-border businesses are planning as though the larger trade war will continue. Former US cheerleaders of US-China integration, such as Hank Paulson, foresee an “economic iron curtain”. Others talk of a “ new cold war”.