The Financial Times writes that a vague agreement by the US and China to continue talking and try to reduce the trade imbalance between the world's two largest economies has put off the launch of a trade war and may eventually result in a broader peace. But it has also provoked an angry response from hardliners on both sides, illustrating how difficult any peace will be to achieve.  Both sides at the weekend agreed to suspend tariffs and continue negotiations over what US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called a "framework" deal that would see Beijing ramp up its purchase of US goods and services and commit to reducing the US's $337bn annual trade deficit with China.  Yet in the US that has fuelled fears among China hawks that the Trump administration may be giving up the leverage it created by threatening tariffs on up to $150bn in Chinese imports earlier this year and sacrificing a broader push for change in China.  Liu He, Xi Jinping's top economic emissary, returned home over the weekend to a similar sceptical welcome.  Chinese social media users circulated a picture juxtaposing one of Mr Liu's meetings on Capitol Hill with Qing dynasty officials negotiating their surrender after US and European forces crushed the Boxer Rebellion in 1901.  Part of the problem for Beijing is that Mr Liu returned home with the fate of ZTE, the Chinese telecommunications company, still hanging in the balance and a seven-year ban on its sourcing of vital US parts still in place. 

The Financial Time says that about a week before the Italian election in March, a Franco-Italian group of business leaders met for a shooting weekend in the countryside south of Paris. The aim of the jaunt, a "regular event" according to one person present, was to foster amitié or harmony between business chiefs at a time when chief executives see the opportunity, and necessity, to create so-called European champions to fend off competition from the US and China. With corporate Europe in the throes of merger enthusiasm, a strengthening economy and a desire for greater cohesiveness as a backlash against Brexit, closer corporate integration is high on the bloc's political agenda. The arrival of French president Emmanuel Macron  and his Jupiterian vision of a "Grand Europe" has also provided a political drive to create these champions even as Chinese companies push on with potential deals. "Europe's companies are too small," said Carlo Alberto Carnevale-Maffè, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Milan's Bocconi University. "European champions could start a new cycle of exporting not just goods but also intangibles, such as services."