From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowave.

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 Bradshaw, on a potential turning point in the standoff,

as President Trump meets this week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and what will be their first talks since the trade war began. Thank you. It's Wednesday, October 29.

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 seemed 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.

China has a boycott against American soybeans right now

because of its unhappiness with

American policies. The United States wants China to stop shipping the chemicals that are used

in Mexico and Latin America to make fentanyl. China wants the United States to allow it to buy any kinds of semiconductors it wants,

...