Washington | This was supposed to be the week US-China trade talks got back on track and the two sides found a way to avoid sending more unsettling signals to financial markets and a global economy that looks increasingly fragile.

But that didn't take long to change. If the state of relations between the world's two largest economies was a tangled mess before the latest round of Chinese negotiations get underway on Thursday and Friday, the tangle has only worsened - and the apparent olive branch extended this week of Chinese commodity purchases that Beijing has been offering all along does little to alter that.

Washington Post