Trump Whines About How Hard It Is to Make a Trade Deal With China

Donald Trump was up late at night whining about how hard it is to make a trade deal with China.

“I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” he posted at 2:17 a.m. on Wednesday.

The post came ahead of an expected call between Trump and the Chinese president on how to negotiate a deal on the two countries’ $600 billion trade relationship—which Trump threatened when he imposed tariffs.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also tried to bully China into quickly accepting a deal. “They either want to be a reliable partner to the rest of the world, or they don’t,” he warned on Tuesday.

But Trump’s own decision seems to be driving him crazy.

“The president is obsessed with having a call with Xi,” one person familiar with the trade talks told Politico, adding that the president seems convinced he can personally come up with a deal with Xi.

In May, the United States and China reached a preliminary trade deal—as Trump lowered his 145 percent tariffs to 30 percent, while Beijing slashed levies on U.S. imports to 10 percent. That came with a 90-day deadline to reach a broader trade deal, but it looks like there’s been little progress since then.

President Trump, notoriously quick to post, has been publicly mum as Elon Musk continues to excoriate his One Big Beautiful Bill. 

The world’s richest man came out in opposition to the bill on Tuesday afternoon, on the grounds that it will sharply increase the national debt. And he posted well into the night about how he thinks the legislation is a total disaster.

“Mammoth spending bills are bankrupting America! ENOUGH,” Musk wrote Tuesday evening. 

“In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” he said, above a post directly chastising the GOP for not being fiscally responsible. He also reposted an article titled, “It’s Rand Paul and Elon Musk vs. Donald Trump over the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, and replied with the American flag emoji over a post from Rand Paul stating that the GOP “can and must do better” on the deficit.  

Trump has made time to attack every critic of his OBBB except Musk, perhaps the loudest and certainly the richest detractor. The president’s silence feels deafening, as his former right hand man continues to disparage what he sees as the defining legislation of his second term—especially after they just appeared together in the Oval Office and made a big deal about Musk leaving DOGE but not actually leaving. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have arrested the entire family of the suspect involved in Sunday’s attack in Boulder, Colorado, after also revoking their visas.

“Today the Department of Homeland Security and ICE are taking the family of suspected Boulder, Colorado, terrorist and illegal alien Mohamed Soliman into ICE custody,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a video message posted on X on Tuesday.

Soliman has been charged with a federal crime and attempted murder for attacking a group of peaceful demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza. His attack left 12 people injured.

Soliman, an Egyptian national, entered the country legally on a tourist visa in August 2022. He filed for asylum the next month, and has been in the country legally since then with a pending asylum application. Presumably, his family was in a similar situation, though DHS hasn’t provided information about their immigration status.

Noem said DHS would be investigating whether the family knew about Soliman’s attack ahead of time, an indication that the department currently has no proof that this is the case. Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson who like other Trump officials falsely claimed that Soliman was in the country illegally, said that the family’s visas have been revoked.

A DHS official said that six people—Soliman’s wife and their children—were taken into ICE custody and will be processed under expedited removal. That will allow the Trump administration to deport them without any proof they were involved in the attack and without any court hearing, Trump’s preferred method when it comes to deportations.

The Navy is considering renaming multiple ships dubbed for prominent Americans who apparently don’t align with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s anti-woke “warrior” ethos. And one of those ships—just in time for Pride Month—is named after assassinated LGBTQ rights leader and Navy veteran Harvey Milk.

CBS News reported Tuesday it had obtained official documents to brief the Navy’s secretary on proposed timelines for revealing the new name for USNS Harvey Milk. The documents do not indicate what the ship’s new name could be.

The Navy documents also list other ships that are being considered for renaming. They include USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman, USNS Dolores Huerta, USNS Lucy Stone, USNS Cesar Chavez, and USNS Medgar Evars. All of the eponymous figures are prominent people of color, women, and/or civil rights leaders from American history.

Since Hegseth was sworn in, he has made it his personal mission to scrub all traces of diversity from the Department of Defense. This has included dismantling DEI hiring and recruitment initiatives and temporarily erasing posts about racial history from the department website.

He announced that the military would no longer recognize Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and other heritage months, declaring the observations “dead” on January 31. He also has happily carried out Trump’s executive order to ban transgender people from serving in the armed forces.

After making a grand gesture of his exit from politics, Elon Musk spent his Tuesday afternoon railing against President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” he wrote on X. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.

“It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt,” he continued, before again posting, “Congress is making America bankrupt.” 

Musk is unfortunately correct here. Republicans’ budget bill is projected to add $4 trillion to the debt ceiling in its House iteration, and $5 trillion in its Senate iteration. The world’s richest man is falling on the side of Senators Rand Paul and Ron Johnson here, who have both stated they will vote against the bill so long as it does nothing about decreasing  the national debt. 

“I agree with Elon,” Paul wrote in reply to Musk on X. “We have both seen the massive waste in government spending and we know another $5 trillion in debt is a huge mistake. We can and must do better.”

Musk has expressed his public opposition to Trump’s bill for some time now. In May, he said that he was “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit—not decrease[s] it—and undermines the work the DOGE team is doing.” 

Musk’s repudiation of the bill makes his dogged enthusiasm—and millions of dollars—that he contributed to the Trump campaign look funny in the light. And furthermore, it raises questions around what exactly the relationship between Trump, Musk, and DOGE will be upon the OBBB’s passing.