Smartphones are like trousers. They’re unnatural, a human artifice that our species survived many millennia without, but which has now proliferated to the point of being essential to everyday life across most of the globe. China’s meteoric economic rise this century sees the Asian country occupying the dual role of the world’s biggest producer and biggest consumer of smartphones. This makes it the most essential nation to humanity’s most essential modern tool, and as such, it insulates China from new American president-elect Donald Trump’s threats of punishing trade tariffs.

One of the tentpole features of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy, from the outset, has been the desire to rectify perceived unfairness in trade with China. Mr….

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