President Trump says he wants Xi Jinping, China’s leader, to call him to talk tariffs. Mr. Xi is ghosting Mr. Trump, and markets are plummeting.

While Trump paused his tariffs on most of the world for 90 days, his tit-for-tat trade war with China has resulted in a steep 145% tariff on Chinese goods, and that’s hitting mostly family-owned small businesses in Chinatown hard.

The Trump administration's tariff war with China is most often seen through the lens of the economy. But to many economists, the bigger threat is that Trump's global trade gambit will erode the United States’ main source of global authority: the long-term geopolitical relationships it has cultivated over nearly a century.