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Donald Trump and China play a poor hand on trade, and is Tencent past its prime?

These are the questions we'll be delving into on this week's views Room, a weekly conversation among breaking views columnists

about the ups and downs of the world of finance. I'm Jennifer Sabah, and with me as my co-host,

Anthony Curry. Hey, Anthony. Hello. The Trump administration and the Chinese government

appeared to have avoided a trade war, but the way they're doing it is short-sighted and stores

up more problems that will have to be dealt with down the road.

Joining us from Washington, D.C., where he's camping out for the next couple of weeks, is our Asia editor, Pete Sweeney.

Welcome, Pete.

Hey, Jane. Thanks. Happy to be on.

All right. So there's been a lot of blustering, a lot of back and forth going between President Donald Trump and Chinese Prime

Minister Xi Jinping on this trade deficit. Trump wants China to close what he perceives a $375 billion

trade deficit, meaning that the U.S. is importing more from China than China is exporting from the U.S.

And so there's been a lot of bluster. They

finally sat down to sign something. And it seems to be kind of nah from the U.S. standpoint.

So Pete, why don't you take us through what exactly that is? Yeah, well, so it's really difficult

for me to, since I've gotten here, to find anybody who's pleased with the way things have gone.

The root of the problem is kind of this misunderstanding on Trump's part about what the causes of economic friction between the countries are.

He has, for his whole career, you know, focused on the trade deficit, the idea that, you know, that China is exporting

tons of stuff to the United States and importing much, much, much less from the United

States and that there's an imbalance and that China is winning.

When you talk to the American business community, of course, they're talking about all these

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