While you weren't looking, everything with China went off the rails

The trade war, which used to be the hottest point of contention between the two economic powers, has been all but forgotten. No one in Washington really seems interested in coming to any kind of deal with Beijing. Deals require cooperation, and there is almost none of that to spare in the US-China relationship.

Instead the focus of the relationship has turned to other more divisive matters, like retaliating against China for its seizure of power in Hong Kong. This, in part, is because the outgoing Trump administration is using its last few months in power to set US-China relations on a hardline course that - it thinks - the Biden administration will find it difficult to pull back from.

But trying to bind the Biden team to a hardline course is probably unnecessary. There is little evidence to suggest a Biden administration would take a much softer line on China. For both parties - Democrats and Republicans - the political winds have changed. The US no longer thinks that cooperating with China's economic growth will push China toward an open society, so the US no longer wishes to cooperate.