While Donald Trump hailed the outcome of trade talks in London, Xi Jinping walked away with an understated strategic gain: a negotiating process that buys China time and helps defuse the threat of more harmful tariffs and technology curbs.

President Trump railed against Xi Jinping in a late-night social media post days ahead of their planned call, complaining that the Chinese leader is “extremely hard to make a deal with” as trade talks stall.

High-level delegations from the United States and China are meeting in London to try and shore up a fragile truce in a trade dispute that has roiled the global economy.