U.S.-China trade is not merely a political question; it exists within a massive system that has been built over decades, the accretive results of countless choices by governments, businesses, consumers, and workers. It is at once a heaving, Brobdingnagian mass of steel and plastic, and a finely choreographed dance among itinerant factory workers, a lonely Filipino crew at sea, and countless other human beings who have found themselves in what most closely resembles an undeclared state, one hiding in plain sight. Its very scope suggests it will not easily yield to political whims.