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... Between the lines: President Trump says he and China's President Xi Jinping spent 90 minutes on the phone Thursday discussing trade.
= = = "There should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products," Trump said " though what that means for exports, as a practical matter, wasn't immediately clear.
= = = Whatever leverage the Trump administration thought it had going into a spree of "90 deals in 90 days" has thus far not delivered much, and now courts are threatening to stand in the president's way.
State of play: The U.S. economy has been resilient thus far, defying predictions of immediate tariff chaos. But new signs suggest private-sector hiring is weakening, and supply chains are breaking down.
= = = Consumer prices are starting to rise, manufacturers' profits are being squeezed, and the specter of inflation looms larger by the day.
= = = Factories are beginning to shut down because they can't get the necessary components, and some companies are reportedly considering the extraordinary step of shipping their unfinished products to China to add the components there.
= = = None of that was the point of the trade war; most of it is the exact opposite. ...
