Even if the president was fixated on the size of the American trade deficit in goods, intellectual property was supposed to be the key point for his negotiators to address. The issue has been brewing for decades, and neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations did enough to force China to stop it. So far, neither has Trump’s. Instead, it surrendered their best leverage quickly by shelving its tariff threat.

America can also no longer pretend more trade with China will promote a political or economic opening. Xi Jinping is now China’s president for life, and his country’s markets are nearly as opaque as they were in 2001, when Beijing joined the World Trade Organization.

What we do know about China’s economy is that it remains heavily dependent on government subsidies, dominated by state-owned enterprises, and its manufacturing sector operates at extraordinary levels of overcapacity. Huge swaths of China’s economy, like its financial and construction sectors, remain closed to foreign investment despite promises to open. And while the Chinese economy grows, largely because of its own propulsion, it has been helped along significantly by rampant intellectual property theft encouraged by the state.

The United States should also acknowledge that preserving its trade relationship with China has compromised American values. It isn’t just the millions of Americans workers who still haven’t fully recovered from the shock of their industries’ exposure to the Chinese import wave. More insidious are the concessions made every day by companies to the demands of the Chinese government, under threat of losing Chinese market access.

With those hard truths in mind, the United States should finally acknowledge the true task before its negotiators. It isn’t how to bend China to America’s advantage; it’s how to manage the relationship with China so the American economy will not be left at a permanent disadvantage.

The Chinese government has a cleareyed view of what it wants: to dominate the industries of the future, including artificial intelligence, robotics and advanced vehicles. Its leaders are clearly willing to use exclusionary policies to get there. What is Mr. Trump prepared to do to stop them, much less responsibly plan to do for our industrial future?

The president, an erstwhile boxing promoter who has made much of his ability to negotiate, should know not to leave his jaw hanging out there in the early rounds of a fight. But he did. If his ego has been damaged enough to see these talks for the disappointment they are, perhaps that will move him to show more resolve as the fight goes on.

But if Mr. Trump doesn’t act now, it could be many years before the United States is again in position to challenge China. By then, it may be too late. Any potential gains to the American economy will already have been conceded to Chinese pre-eminence. Let’s hope he can pull himself off the ropes in time.