Donald Trump has started signaling that he’s ready to slash tariffs on Chinese imports, but economists have warned that the US softening its stance now likely cedes power to China, which perhaps benefits from dragging out trade talks.

On Tuesday, Trump confirmed that he is willing to reduce 145 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports. A senior White House official told The Wall Street Journal that the tariffs may come ”down to between roughly 50 percent and 65 percent.” Or perhaps the US may use a tiered approach, charging a 35 percent tax on goods that don’t threaten national security, while requiring 100 percent tariffs on imports ”deemed as strategic to America’s interest,” other insiders told the WSJ.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, had some tough words for big tech this week, but it seems that at the last minute, the EU lost its nerve. Under the Digital Markets Act, companies that the EU has designated as “gatekeepers” – that is, digital platforms that provide core services such as search engines, app stores and messenger services – have special obligations and constraints that are meant to ensure a fair playing field for other companies.

Apple, which takes a significant cut of purchases (including subscriptions) made through its App Store, violated the act by preventing developers from directing customers to their own websites to get around the “Apple tax”. In Meta’s case, the company was fined for forcing Facebook and Instagram users to either consent to letting Meta use their personal data, or pay a monthly fee to remove ads.

It’s a rare thing to shoot yourself in the foot and win a marathon. For years, Elon Musk has managed to do something like that with Tesla, achieving monumental success in spite of a series of self-inflicted disasters. There was the time he heavily promoted the company’s automated factory, only to later admit that its “crazy, complex network of conveyor belts” had thrown production of the Model 3 off track; and the time a tweet led him to be suedfor fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission; and the time he saidthat the Tesla team had “dug our own grave” with the massively delayed and overhyped Cybertruck. Tesla is nonetheless the most valuable car company in the world by a wide margin.

You might have heard, it’s been a busy couple days in Islanders-land.

The Isles plunged themselves into a new era Tuesday by firing Lou Lamoriello, with minority owner and operating partner John Collins tapped to lead the search for a new general manager.

In the meantime, there’s a whole lot of assumptions that have been thrown into question and a long list of things for whoever gets hired to figure out, from the coaching staff to the roster to the front-office staff to the team’s marketing.

Here’s a preliminary list of burning questions:

For a while, it seemed as if DOGE Elon and Tesla Elon could exist in the same space-time continuum. One of them carried out Donald Trump’s ruthless cost-cutting mission while the other pitched cars that appealed most to people who were highly likely to oppose that mission, or even rage against it. As activists spray-painted stop doge on Teslas at dealerships and anti-Tesla protests spread all over the world, there still was no concrete proof that Elon Musk had to amend either version of himself. Then this week came Tesla’s first quarterly earnings report since Musk started his work with DOGE, showing the company’s profits down 71 percent from the same time last year. After a conference call, one major investor said Musk was “delusional.” Suddenly it seemed as if Musk was on a “Kanye West–like trajectory,” according to Patrick George, editor in chief of InsideEVs and our guest this week on Radio Atlantic.

Apple has debuted a new ’Hill Climb’ episode in its Adventure series of immersive videos for Vision Pro.

The company announced the episode in a post on X today:

—
Ride along with driver Laura Hayes in Apple Immersive Video as she races to break the women’s rally car record at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

Adventure — Only on Apple Vision Pro