President meets the Chinese leader for one hundred minutes and announces a one-year truce in the trade war he started.

The President met the leader of China on Thursday morning in Busan, South Korea. The meeting lasted approximately one hundred minutes. It was, on the public record, the first face-to-face conversation between the two men since 2019. The cameras were on for ninety seconds at the top, then off.

The communique, after the meeting: a one-year truce in the trade war. China will pause for one year the rare-earth export controls it announced on October 9. The U.S. will lower the rate of certain tariffs on Chinese imports, on a schedule to be defined. China agreed to resume purchases of U.S. soybeans. Both sides agreed to “intensify cooperation” on fentanyl precursor chemistry. The Presidents will exchange visits in 2026.

Hon. Read the deliverable again. The deliverable is that China will pause an export control they announced three weeks ago. The export control they announced three weeks ago was, in part, a response to us announcing 100% tariffs on China three weeks ago. Both sides escalated in early October. Both sides walked back the early-October escalation in late October. That is the deal.

A “deal” that returns to the status quo of three weeks earlier is not a deal in the sense your average American thinks the word “deal” means. It is a cessation of an avoidable mutual injury. The mutual injury was avoidable because both sides chose to start it. The cessation is, on its own terms, fine. It is not, by itself, an accomplishment. It is closing the wound the same hand that opened it last month is now closing.

I have been a waitress for thirty years. I have watched a lot of customers congratulate themselves for not knocking the salt shaker off the table after they spent the previous three minutes scooting it toward the edge.

The other things in the readout. The fentanyl line, which is real. The soybean line, which restores a trade flow we have specifically depended on. The Taiwan line, which is conspicuously absent. The TikTok line, which got mentioned and not resolved. The export controls on chips, which got mentioned and not resolved.

By Friday morning the President had skipped the rest of the APEC summit. The Chinese leader stayed and worked the room. The room is, this morning, with the leader who stayed.

You ever notice how the great deal-maker always seems to leave the deal-making part of the summit before the part where the deals get done.

That ought to concern you.