Bloomberg: While Trump called out China’s yuan policy long before Merz — even tagging the country for a time as a currency manipulator — he appears to favor individual economic deals, not group ones. So rather than seizing the chance to engage with Europe in a broad China initiative, Bessent and his teammates have instead pursued their own track with Beijing.
“The US agenda has shrunk radically, while Europe’s agenda has expanded to include the classic topics of macroeconomic coordination,” says Brad Setser, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. “The opportunity clearly would have existed for coordinated action against China had the US played its cards differently.”…