It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of non-reciprocal trade. American nuts are to be sold en masse to the Chinese as part of the extra $200 billion worth of extra US goods that the mainland promised to purchase – $40 billion of that from US agricultural producers. At least that was what the new trade deal between China and the United States (so-called “Phase I”) provided for, in part, wrote James Cooper, an American law professor, in an article for Coindesk.