Relations between the United States and China will be the defining global issue for the next decade. The threat posed by China — economically, militarily and technologically — will be the paramount concern for whoever wins the presidential election in November.

President Joe Biden’s administration has tried both the carrot (top-level meetings following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to San Francisco) and the stick — maintaining Donald Trump’s tariffs and adding new ones on electric vehicles (100 per cent), solar components (50 per cent) and semiconductors (50 per cent) to manage competition between the two while prompting concern that this trade scuffle may become a “forever war.” The intensifying conflict with China has many trademarks of a new Cold War.