Tariff Flip-Flops – The New York Times

President Trump made big promises with his China tariffs: China needs us more than we need it. America can outlast China in a trade war. Those advantages will let the administration get big concessions and rebalance global commerce.

Trump’s actions, however, suggest the talk was bluster. Yesterday, his administration cut its China tariffs from 145 percent to 30 percent for at least a few months. China will reciprocate by lowering its retaliatory levies from 125 percent to 10 percent. Both sides will keep talking.

But China made no concessions. By now, most of us are familiar with this pattern: Trump makes big claims about what his tariffs can get, only for him to later back down without the other country giving up anything meaningful. It happened with Mexico, Canada and most of Trump’s “Liberation Day” levies. Despite his claims, America seems to need other countries’ trade as much as they need ours, diminishing Trump’s negotiating position. Today’s newsletter explains.

Price hikes and shortages

Here’s the problem: Trade is mutually beneficial. The buyer gets a good, and the seller makes a profit. The United States runs a trade deficit with China — it buys more than it sells — because Americans have the cash and want what China is selling.

Trump’s tariffs on China were so high that they were effectively an embargo that threatened to end all of those mutually beneficial transactions. That would cover a lot of goods — more than 70 percent of smartphones, laptops and toys — as well as manufacturing materials, particularly rare earth metals used in modern electronics. Retailers warned that prices would rise and shelves would go empty. Markets tumbled.

The hits to the economy weakened Trump’s negotiating position, and China knew it. Americans spent the last few years fuming about inflation and supply mishaps, and they would be furious if those problems continued. And unlike previous bouts of inflation that leaders could pin on the pandemic or the Ukraine war, this time it would clearly be Trump’s fault.

So China took a patient approach. Let prices rise and markets fall, and eventually Trump would have to give in. That strategy worked, at least for now.

What remains

Trump still has time to get some concessions out of China, which does not want to lose its biggest global customer. The concessions could be small. In the past, countries have given Trump minor compromises in response to tariffs — enough for him to save face, essentially — as when Canada vaguely promised to step up border enforcement earlier this year.

In the meantime, tariffs remain much higher than they were before Trump’s second term. When Trump ran for president, many economists warned that his promise of 10 percent tariffs on every other country would hurt the economy. Even after all of Trump’s backpedaling, a 10 percent universal tariff is still in place. Duties on specific goods, such as cars, are even higher. Prices on clothes, appliances, video game consoles and everything else made in other countries will likely rise as a result.

For more

• The cut in tariffs on China is, for now, temporary. While some importers could rush to order Chinese goods, others may move more cautiously.

• Trade experts warned that 90 days may not be enough time to make substantial progress on the U.S. and China’s long list of trade disputes.

• America must reckon with two sides of China’s economy, Li Yuan writes: One is a technology superpower, and the other is struggling.

INSIDE THE CONCLAVE

The most-clicked link in the newsletter yesterday was the remarkable inside story of how cardinals picked the new pope.

It’s always a feat to get skittish officials to confide in reporters. Yet Times journalists persuaded many Vatican leaders (sworn to secrecy on pain of excommunication!) to share how they narrowed three front-runners down to a single obvious choice. I asked Jason Horowitz, our Rome bureau chief, how they reported it out. — Adam B. Kushner

I thought deliberations inside the Sistine Chapel were sacrosanct!

Nobody said, “I voted for X.” Nobody told us, “The tally was within 10 votes and then Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost crept up.” Nobody gave a level of granular detail that could get them in trouble. But we used a lot of shoe-leather reporting — tracking cardinals down, finding them on the phone, leaning on relationships built over years. Each gave us a small kernel of detail. The combination revealed a picture of what happened.

We learned how Prevost avoided politicking at dinner on the conclave’s first night, how he held his head as the final votes were counted. What does the vow of secrecy cover, exactly?

I think it’s like how Justice Potter Stewart described obscenity — you know it when you see it. I didn’t advise sources to cross an ethical line. One cardinal said it happened on the fourth vote, and maybe that stretches the rules. But it’s just that we spoke to so many people that we could piece it together. It was more the collective work than one revelatory interview.

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Trump in the Middle East

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• Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, asked hundreds of cities and towns to ban homeless encampments.

• Cities in Illinois are using crime-free housing programs to oust families for minor infractions, an investigation by The Times and The Illinois Answers Project found.

BOY PROBLEMS

Young men are struggling, and we wanted to figure out just how badly and why.

Boys enter kindergarten lagging behind girls in both academic readiness and behavior. A majority of teenagers agree that boys are more disruptive. Large shares say girls get better grades, have more leadership roles and speak up more in class.

In interviews, young men say that school never felt like a good fit for them, or that they got the sense that teachers didn’t like boys, and that this left them feeling discouraged or undervalued. By high school, girls are more likely to graduate on time — and more likely to go to college.

Rivers, wildfires, lightning: A NASA astronaut recently spent 220 days at the International Space Station, where he captured the wonders visible from space. See his photos.

TikTok stars: Oliver Widger quit his job, cashed in his 401(k) and bought a boat. Now he and his cat, Phoenix, are sailing around the world.

Trending online yesterday: The rapper Tory Lanez was stabbed 14 times in a California prison. Lanez is serving a 10-year sentence for shooting Megan Thee Stallion.

Lives Lived: Robert Shapiro was a law professor who became a brash corporate executive. He performed a marketing miracle by branding aspartame as the sugar substitute NutraSweet. Shapiro died at 86.

Electronic dance music is back. Festival lineups are filled with D.J.s, while the biggest names in pop — including Beyoncé and Charli XCX — have made albums inspired by dance. No one style of the genre has surged in popularity over the others: hard techno, drum and bass, Afro house and U.K. garage are all finding audiences. Read more about the renaissance — and the forces fueling it.

Related: Want to get in on the scene? See where to club, which artists to follow and what songs to hear.