From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroeff.
This is The Daily.
President Trump's trade war against China has so far proven much harder to win than his administration ever let on.
And it's only getting worse as China undertakes its most aggressive act of retaliation to date.
Today, my colleague Keith Bradsher, on a potential turning point in the standoff,
as President Trump meets this week with Chinese leader
Xi Jinping
in what will be their first talks since the trade war began.
It's Wednesday, October 29th.
Keith, I think a lot of us frankly started to feel as though this trade war may have finally died down.
I think we were lulled perhaps into a false sense of calm when there wasn't that much news on this for months,
but then all of a sudden things seem to heat back up again.
So give us a sense of the state of the relationship right now.
The relationship is at one of its tensest moments in years.
Both sides have threatened measures bordering on economic warfare against each other.
There's an urgency to resolving these issues at the meeting on Thursday in South Korea between the two countries' top leaders.
Here in Beijing, everyone is watching to see can they reach some kind of a deal that pulls both countries back from the brink?
And what are the main sticking points right now in these negotiations?
Like, what do we expect to come up in that meeting?
The United States wants China to start buying soybeans again.