The day’s big news came in the early morning, when the U.S. and China announced a 90-day temporary reduction in tariff levels while the two countries continue to negotiate. U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports go from 145% to 30%, while the retaliatory Chinese tariffs on U.S. exports go from 125% to 10%. Paul Krugman’s article about the situation this morning was titled “When an arsonist poses as a firefighter,” which seems about right. The stock market loved the news, but the overall uncertainty and incoherence associated with Trump’s tariff policy remains.

Trump’s teased executive order on prescription drug pricing turned out to be something of a nothingburger. He’s giving pharmaceutical manufacturers 30 days to voluntarily reduce drug prices to most-favored-nation levels, or else… HHS will embark upon a rulemaking plan to impose it, somehow? And this from the party that vigorously opposed giving the federal government any role in negotiating drug prices for Medicare with manufacturers, and that two years ago opposed a nationwide price cap on a century-old drug whose discoverers had sold the patent for a symbolic $1. Fuhgeddabouddit. This does not strike me as a serious policy initiative.

Today the House Republicans released the first draft of their tax bill. At this point the bill does not propose a 39.6% marginal bracket for millionaires, but instead retains the 2025 tax brackets with inflation adjustments, leaving the top marginal rate at 37%. Some relief is given on the SALT deduction limitation, but only up to $30,000 instead of the current $10,000, and the incremental deduction phases out over the $400K-$500K income range; this is unlikely to satisfy the New York and California Republican delegations. The bill also proposes a new type of tax-preferenced savings vehicle called a MAGA (which stands for “money account for growth and advancement”), although the accounts can only be funded with respect to individuals age 8 or less. Trump’s previous tax bill had introduced a 1.4% net investment income tax on those university endowments whose value exceeds $500K per student; continuing Trump’s war on Harvard and other elite institutions, the House bill turbocharges that tax, with the rate going up to 21% on endowments whose value exceeds $2 million per student. Of course this bill will inevitably take many twists and turns in the weeks and months ahead, but after three-and-a-half months we finally have a stake in the ground on a key part of Congress’ top legislative priority.

Finally, I had commented recently about Trump having just fired the Librarian of Congress. The next day he fired the Registrar of Copyrights, who heads the U.S. Copyright Office and reports to the Librarian of Congress. Coincidentally, the U.S. Copyright Office had just published a report called “Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 3: Generative AI Training,” an area that is certainly of keen interest to Elon Musk, who two years ago had started an artificial intelligence firm called xAI that is reportedly in the process of raising funding at a valuation of $120 billion.