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Hey there, happy Monday. Chinese President Xi Jinping is headed to Washington this week for his first U.S. visit in the second Trump administration. The summit comes as both presidents downplayed the existential threat of artificial intelligence, and rejected calls to slow down development. AI is likely to be a big topic, but more immediately pressing is trade. To start us off today, Marketplace’s Justin Ho gets us up to speed on the trade war.  — Tony Wagner, newsletter editor  
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images
U.S.-China trade tensions simmer ahead of Trump-Xi meeting
Tariffs have come down, but they’re still higher than they were under the Biden administration.
It wasn’t too long ago that tariffs on Chinese goods were skyrocketing.

U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods reached 145% at their peak back in the spring of 2025, according to Meagan Schoenberger, senior economist at KPMG.

She said China was hitting back, too.

“Reciprocal tariffs on U.S. goods reached 125%,” Schoenberger said.

But in the time since, tariffs have come down.

Nowadays, on average, “most of the things you’re buying in the store that are Chinese-made will have about a 20-to-30% tariff, depending on the type of product,” said Ed Gresser, director of trade and global markets at the Progressive Policy Institute.

That’s still higher than tariffs were during the Biden administration, Gresser said, but it is a sign that the trade war is on hold.

“It’s not like issues are settled. It’s more like … both sides have been bloodied a bit, and they’re feeling it in their best interest to not continue that for a while,” he said.

Imports from China to the U.S. have been picking up this year.

Schoenberger at KPMG said that’s been fueled by demand for computers, data storage devices, and other components needed to build out AI infrastructure.

“It is the main driver of why we see a larger trade deficit in the most recent numbers. And a lot of these products, importantly, are exempted from tariffs,” she said.
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News you should know
Let’s do the numbers
  • Stocks rallied on a bit of relief for oil prices and bond yields. The S&P 500 closed up 1.5% to striking distance of its all-time high. The Dow gained 0.7%, and the Nasdaq composite jumped 2.3% to set a new record.

  • California led 11 other states to a settlement agreement with Paramount Skydance, clearing the way for the studio’s $111 billion merger with Warner Bros Discovery. Paramount shares fell nearly 3% today while WBD’s stock jumped 10.8%.

  • President Donald Trump has been in office 20 months, and in that time the S&P 500 added about 27.6%. Here’s how that compares to Trump 1 and past administrations.
The Trump administration
  • President Trump’s wealth has grown by billions in that time, thanks to his many investments, including stock in AI companies. The president has called efforts to slow down AI development a “hoax.”

  • Major TV networks stopped covering the White House indefinitely after Trump banned CNN, Politico and MS NOW. The news organizations are suing on First Amendment grounds.

  • Immigrants can now be denied a green card if they or their children have received any kind of public benefit, like Medicaid or free school lunch. Public charge rules like this are more than a century old, but Trump has greatly expanded them. 
Gambling
  • Former employees say DraftKings used machine learning to identify gamblers more likely to lose and keep them playing with promotional offers — but wouldn’t use similar tech to curb problem gambling.

  • Sports bet winnings would satisfy the new Medicaid work requirements, an American Enterprise Institute analysis found. One wouldn’t even have to gamble much — or lose much — to exploit this loophole.


A woman sits on her front stoop of a new home with two children.
Courtesy Jillian VanTuyle
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“They got a great deal on a house, and I have no more credit card debts.”
— Jillian VanTuyle, of Illinois
VanTuyle accumulated $60,000 in credit card debt during the pandemic, and her monthly payments were far exceeding her mortgage. Bad credit meant she couldn’t refinance or pull equity out of the home, so VanTuyle ended up finding a buyer who would rent her house back to her. She told us her story as part of our ongoing series “Adventures in Housing.”
HEAR MORE
A Callaway Golf bag
Rob Tringali/SportsChrome/Getty Images
Final note
Who approved that?
Good Good Golf just announced its next big project after a controversial ad with Callaway cost the company sponsorships and multiple executives. The 15-second online spot showed one of Good Good’s founders shoving his colleague, a woman, to the ground and saying “Do not touch my new driver.” 

Both Callaway and Good Good pointed fingers at each other after the near-instant backlash. Neither would talk with us but we went ahead and asked experts how tone-deaf or scandalous ads make it to air, and what they can cost companies.
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