Hints of Xi-Trump rapprochement while Apec slides into irrelevance

FOR an entity that is often dismissed as being well past its use-by date, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) seems to have a lot riding on its meetings happening in South Korea later this month. Talks on the sidelines between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, it is being argued, could lead to an upturn in their beleaguered relationship.

Both sides hit each other with tariffs that reached triple digits earlier this year. Since then, Washington and Beijing have agreed to de-escalate their tariff war. In August, both sides stepped back from the brink again and delayed re-imposition of higher tariffs on each other’s exports until Nov 10.

The two leaders have not met face to face since their 2019 talks during Trump’s first term, but have spoken by phone three times this year. The last conversation yielded a deal on the TikTok social media platform. This deal, plus a goodwill visit of a bipartisan US Congressional delegation to Beijing around the same time and recent positive statements from both sides, may indicate something is afoot. Perhaps some kind of modus vivendi is being worked out on both trade and geopolitical fronts. If the received wisdom holds, a Xi-Trump meeting would end in a display of handshakes and mutual backslapping, even if it is mostly political theatre.