On Monday there was a "relief rally’’ in global financial markets as investors bought Donald Trump’s triumphant interpretation of the outcome of his trade negotiations over dinner with China’s Xi Jinping. Overnight, reality sunk in. As the wave of selling in offshore markets seeped, in a more muted form, into the Australian sharemarket the only thing that is clear about the outcome of those conversations over dinner is that not even the Trump administration appears to know what was actually agreed. It is the confusion and the conflict between what Trump initially claimed, what he is now tweeting, what his administration says was agreed, and what China is not saying that undermined the markets.
