For the first time in eleven years, an American president walked to the tarmac to personally receive a foreign leader, and the gesture was not incidental — it was a declaration. Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, whose nations spent much of the previous year locked in escalating economic combat, met in Washington this week to extend a fragile trade truce and explore whether something more durable might be built in its place. The visit, unprecedented in its reciprocal rhythm — Beijing in May, Washington in September — suggests that even the most consequential rivalries carry within them the possibili