India, Jan. 8 -- You might've thought, with 12 days till another president, economic relations between Beijing and Washington would be full of smiling optimism. They aren't.

A president who can't even post on Facebook has still managed to provoke what could be a long-run economic rift.

Trading in China's three largest telecoms firms, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom Hong Kong, will now halt on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, January 11, at 4AM New York time.

The decision followed some flip-flopping, amid regulatory uncertainty, and pressure on NYSE President Stacey Cunningham, in a Tuesday telephone call from the soon-to-be-ex US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. In the delisting's fall-out, indices, including S&P D...