Paris Talks Float US-China ‘Board of Trade’ and Bigger Farm Buys Ahead of March 31 Trump-Xi Summit

This feels less like Nixon’s 1972 opening and more like the 1986 U.S.–Japan Semiconductor Accord: a pivot from tariff brinkmanship to managed trade boards intended to police volumes product-by-product. The proposed bilateral Boards echo 1930s London Debt Conferences—ad-hoc bodies that hardened into institutions steering commerce for decades. The talks sit atop a longer arc: since the 2018-24 tariff wars, each side has oscillated between decoupling (export controls, rare-earth weaponization) and selective re-coupling in food and critical minerals. If these Boards take root, they could institutionalize a quota-based, state-brokered trading relationship—reversing 40 years of WTO-style multilateralism and edging toward a 19th-century sphere-of-influence model. On a 100-year timeline, today’s baby step may matter less for the soybean tonnage than for whether the world’s top two economies choose bureaucratic co-management over rule-based globalization, nudging the system toward blocs rather than a single open market.