The writer is an FT contributing editor and writes the Chartbook newsletterLooking to the future much of the world is frozen in horror at the prospect that American democracy will, by this time next year, deliver a second Donald Trump administration, hell-bent on tearing up the international order. But what about Joe Biden’s record on that score? Clearly, the manners of the Biden administration are less disruptive. It does not indulge in climate denial. It plays nicely with Europe. But in a changing world, Biden’s unabashed baby boomer conviction that America should be number one comes at a price.

In economic policy the administration has been nationalist. The US has poured resources into Ukraine and the Middle East, but is unable and unwilling to broker a satisfactory peace. In relation to China the Biden team has, if anything, escalated the tension.

By the spring of 2023, amid military sabre-rattling and tit-for-tat economic sanctions, Sino-US relations had reached a dangerous point. It is testament to the diplomatic nous of Biden’s team that it realised the need to pull back. One way to do so was to insist that in its multipronged economic campaign against China, America’s aim is to do no more than to defend a defined sphere of essential interest — “a small yard” — with a high fence.