Liu He arrives in DC today in advance of the principal-level trade negotiations that reconvene on Thursday. DC is expecting a nasty bought of winter weather Wednesday (snow, sleet, ice, rain) so it is good he won’t have to worry about all the coming flight cancellations.

Liu is once again called “Chairman Xi Jinping’s special envoy 习近平主席特使” in official Chinese statements about this round of the talks, so perhaps he has more to offer this visit. I believe the last time he had this designation was May 2018 when he and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin thought they had a deal, until President Trump blew it up after much criticism that it was too weak.

Huawei has launched a coordinated (with Beijing?) communications counter-offensive to combat the US pressure on European countries to block the firm from 5G networks. Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei gave more western media interviews, including to BBC, in what was clearly not a coincidence since the UK seems to be wavering in the face of US demands to…