Any effort to impose a bilateral solution on a multilateral problem will backfire, with ominous consequences for American consumers.

China denied on Friday that it had offered a package to slash the U.S. trade deficit by up to $200 billion, hours after it dropped an anti-dumping probe into U.S. sorghum imports in a conciliatory gesture as top officials meet in Washington.

Can the US be as pragmatic as China?

China and the US are an important part of the global economy. China and the US can cooperate, but great effort and time will be needed for negotiations.

The ZTE crisis has shocked China by revealing its vulnerability to foreign countries in advanced technologies. Even though the U.S. is fully justified to punish a Chinese company for violating the rules, it should take into account that if it is perceived as exploiting China's dependence, it could face further difficulties in making progress in other fields, such as reducing China's market barriers.

How China and the U.S. can strike a new deal.

Chinese FDI transactions dropped by over a third in 2017 as Beijing imposed restrictions over outbound investment and Washington toughened screening of high-tech acquisitions.

At its core, the current flare up in U.S.-China trade relations is only the latest episode in a long-running rivalry between the two sides in science and technology. Washington should take the present climate as an opportunity to engage China in a constructive way and look inward for ways to shore up its own tech sector.

Following two years of decline, in 2017 the US exported more goods to China than ever before – nearly $128 billion – making it the third largest market for goods exports, after Canada and Mexico.

The US should stop resorting to unilaterialism and protectionism on trade issues. In this way the economic cooperation between China, the United States, and other countries can be further consolidated and developed.