The ongoing US-China trade war, at its deepest and most consequential, is a struggle over different visions of economic governance and models of technological innovation in a globalising world economy.

On the surface there appear to be many similarities between the positions of the world's two largest economies. Both the Donald Trump and Xi Jinping administrations believe in using state power to manage trade in the interests of particular producers, rather than letting consumers determine the cross-border flow of goods and services, as in a normal market economy.