By many counts, the trade deal President Trump signed on Wednesday with China lacks heft. It doesn’t remove all the tariffs, it doesn’t impose any major penalties on intellectual property theft, and it punts completely on issues including China’s state subsidies to prop up its own companies in international markets.

Yet on one matter, the agreement could dramatically alter the U.S.-China relationship and the future of global democracy.

At the signing, Trump trumpeted a future of “harmony, prosperity, and, really, commerce — commerce and — far beyond commerce, between the United States and China.” If he means it, the United States will make an enormous strategic error: treating this minor trade deal as reason for a closer relationship with Beijing and turning a blind eye to its unfolding atrocities.