The US-China trade war started with fusillades of rhetoric. When former president Donald Trump first imposed tariffs on China, in 2018, he levelled a string of accusations at one of America’s biggest trade partners.
Beijing, he said, had stolen intellectual property, erected market barriers, forced technology transfers from US companies and manipulated the value of its currency.
Four years on, the rhetoric has subsided. Now, the trade war between the world’s two superpowers is characterised more by intricate legal work than by volleys of invective across the Pacific. And the activity is particularly intense in two areas: technology and finance.