| President Donald Trump’s impromptu, rambling Oval Office press gaggles and all-hours social media posts are our best window into his version of personal statecraft. Today, we saw him square off with the two of the biggest personalities linked to his vision of US trade and American governance: China’s Xi Jinping and his erstwhile adviser, tech billionaire Elon Musk. The morning kicked off with a phone call with the Chinese leader, a conversation Trump has almost begged for over recent weeks, confident his personal touch was the only way the world’s top two economies could de-escalate their tariff war. “It’s very complex stuff and we straightened it out,” he said, adding the two sides agreed to further trade talks and resolved issues over supplies of rare-earth minerals. The only other so-called “deliverable” he touted was that Xi invited him and first lady Melania Trump to China, and he reciprocated. (Beijing’s recap of the conversation made no reference to invites.) Market optimism after the call faded quickly as stocks gave up their post-call gains ahead of tomorrow’ jobs report. “The dollar and US stocks got about what they were expecting from the Trump-Xi call,” my colleague Garfield Reynolds wrote on Bloomberg’s Markets Live blog. “Nothing new, but also nothing dangerous,” he wrote.  Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in 2017. Photographer: Nicolas Asfouri/Getty Images The bigger drama came when the Trump-Musk relationship went within hours from a rift over the president’s tax-cut bill to a raging dumpster fire. After some mildly critical comments by Trump in the Oval Office — “I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot” — they both took to their respective social media platforms to flame each other. Trump threatened to cancel contracts and subsidies for Tesla and SpaceX that fuel Musk’s billions (which were never targeted by his DOGE enforcers’ chainsaws). Musk retaliated with a torrent that included a reference to the late disgraced Jeffrey Epstein. As my Washington colleagues Natalia Drozdiak and Courtney McBride wrote recently, a key component of Trump’s brand is his belief that he can cut deals with strongmen. But it’s become clear this week that making trade progress with China, not to mention stopping Russia’s war in Ukraine or reaching a nuclear deal with Iran, will require more than just bullying or charm. “The president is coming face to face with the fact that leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi aren’t as willing to back down as he’d predicted,” they wrote. As for Musk, Tesla fell 14%, erasing about $150 billion in market value. — Ramsey Al-Rikabi | 
