President Donald Trump landed in Beijing on Wednesday for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first visit by a U.S. president to China since Trump himself went in November 2017. He brought a delegation that reads like a Fortune 10 roster: Apple’s Tim Cook, Tesla’s Elon Musk, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon, Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg, and Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, among others.
“We’re gonna be talking with President Xi about a lot of different things,” Trump told reporters. “I would say more than anything else will be trade.”
The trip was originally scheduled for April but was delayed by the U.S. war with Iran. The administration hopes to establish a “Board of Trade” and a parallel “Board of Investment” to manage disputes, CNBC reported. Taiwan is also on the table. Iran, Trump said, isn’t a priority. “I wouldn’t say Iran is one of them, to be honest with you, because we have Iran very much under control,” he said.
The first U.S. presidential visit to Beijing was Nixon’s, in February 1972. Every president since has made the trip. The calculus hasn’t changed in fifty-four years: two economies that need each other, two governments that don’t trust each other, and a summit to see whether the math still holds.
Consumer prices rose 3.8 percent over the past twelve months, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday. That’s the highest annual rate since May 2023. Month over month, the index climbed 0.6 percent.
Energy drove most of it. The energy index jumped 3.8 percent in April alone, accounting for more than 40 percent of the headline gain, according to CNBC. Gasoline is up 28.4 percent over the year. Food at home rose 0.7 percent for the month, the biggest monthly increase since August 2022. Shelter costs, which had been easing, climbed 0.6 percent. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, ran at 2.8 percent annually.
Real average hourly wages fell 0.5 percent for the month and 0.3 percent for the year, CNBC reported. Workers are earning more on paper and buying less with it.
A CNN poll conducted by SSRS from April 30 to May 4 found that 76 percent of Americans now call the cost of living the top financial problem facing their family, CNN reported. Sixty-one percent said they’ve changed what groceries they buy to stay within budget. Nearly seven in ten expect a recession within the next year.
The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since late February, and Brent crude is trading near $106 a barrel, compared with around $70 before the war with Iran began. The last time a Middle Eastern conflict rewrote American grocery receipts this fast was the Arab oil embargo of 1973. Inflation ran above 12 percent by the end of 1974, and the Federal Reserve spent the rest of the decade trying to bring it back down. The circumstances are different. The mechanism is the same.
The Senate voted 51-45 on Tuesday to confirm Kevin Warsh to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Al Jazeera reported. Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote yes.
The next step is a confirmation vote for the four-year chairmanship, expected as soon as Wednesday, according to The Hill. Current Chair Jerome Powell’s term ends Friday.
Warsh’s path to confirmation passed through a contentious hearing in April. Senator Elizabeth Warren told him he was Trump’s “sock puppet,” pointing to the president’s public statement that interest rates would drop “when Kevin gets in,” CNN reported. Warsh said he would refuse to take orders from the president on rates.
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson summoned Fed Chair William McChesney Martin to his Texas ranch and berated him over monetary policy. Martin raised rates anyway. In 1971, President Nixon pressured Fed Chair Arthur Burns to keep rates low before the election. Burns complied. Inflation followed, and the consequences lasted a decade. The question of whether a president can bend the Federal Reserve to his will has been answered before. It has been answered both ways.
Marty Makary resigned as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday, ending a thirteen-month tenure, NPR reported.
The proximate cause was flavored e-cigarettes. On May 6, the FDA approved flavored vaping products from Glas Inc. after Trump pressured Makary to reverse his refusal, according to the Washington Post. Makary’s objection was the products’ appeal to children. The approval happened. The resignation followed.
Trump said in a statement: “I want to thank Dr. Marty Makary for having done a great job at the FDA,” Time reported.
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said: “I voted for Dr. Makary to head the FDA based upon his commitment to say ’no’ if President Trump asked him to do something that would harm America. Dr. Makary kept his word,” according to his office.
Kyle Diamantas, the deputy commissioner for food, will serve as acting commissioner, STAT reported.
A Nigerian military airstrike hit Tumfa market in Zurmi district, Zamfara state, on Sunday, killing at least 100 civilians, Amnesty International said Tuesday. It was the second airstrike to kill scores of people at a crowded market in northern Nigeria within a month.
Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International’s Nigeria director, said: “In one village alone, 80 people were buried and there is no evidence that any of those people killed is a bandit. The majority of them are young girls and small boys.”
Nigeria’s military denied that the strike killed civilians, saying the target was “a confirmed terrorist structure occupied by armed non-state actors.” Amnesty called on Nigerian authorities to investigate. Nigeria has been fighting a seventeen-year Islamist insurgency in the northeast and widespread banditry in the northwest. The civilian cost of both campaigns has been documented by human rights organizations for years. The markets and the village names change. The pattern does not.
And one good thing.
In San Diego County, a desalination plant built because a drought nearly broke the region is now sending water to states that need it.
The Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, the largest seawater desalination facility in North America, produces 54 million gallons of drinking water per day, according to the Good News Network. It was built after a five-year drought that ended in 1992 and left the county with a third fewer water resources than it had before.
On March 19, the Water Authority and Western Municipal Water District announced a twenty-one-year agreement for at least 10,000 acre-feet of water per year, phys.org reported. Arizona’s Department of Water Resources and the Southern Nevada Water Authority are in separate negotiations to acquire a share of the plant’s output through an exchange of Colorado River water rights.
The plant took more than two decades to plan, finance, permit, and build. It opened in December 2015. More than thirty years passed between the drought that proved the need and the agreements that are now proving the value. The people who pushed for this in the 1990s didn’t know it would eventually supply water to neighboring states. They knew their county needed water, and they built the thing that would provide it.
That’s not a bad way to solve a problem.
It is Wednesday. The president is in Beijing. Prices are up and wages are not. The next Fed chair is one vote away. The FDA commissioner resigned over flavored vapes. In Zamfara, a market that was full on Sunday is not full anymore. And in San Diego, the water is flowing to places that need it. That’s the day.
