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President Trump works to publicly de-escalate trade tensions with China following Friday's

market freak out. Plus, what a slew of results from America's biggest banks could tell us about

the U.S. economy. And we take a look at which federal agencies are being hit the hardest by

shutdown layoffs.

We are still trying to get a sense of where some of these cuts are taking place,

and Americans might not really notice the difference until the government is back at full force.

It's Tuesday, October 14th. I'm Caitlin McCabe for the Wall Street Journal,

and here is the AM edition of What's News,

the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

After roiling markets late last week with threats to impose new sanctions on China,

the Trump administration is working to de-escalate the latest flare-up in trade tensions.

Trump's 100% tariff threat on Friday came after Beijing moved to impose restrictions on the export of rare earth minerals.

But our Asia economics editor, Peter Landers, says that President Trump is trying to

publicly turn down the heat on China to soothe markets, while speaking to senior officials

privately about trying to keep the pressure on. So Treasury Secretary Scott Besson has been at the

center of these discussions with the White House about how the U.S. could hit back further against China.

For example, they could target stocks of Chinese companies that are listed on the U.S. Stock Exchange.

They could sanction Chinese firms that are involved in buying Russian oil, which has been a big issue for President Trump.

So lots of tools the U.S. has, lots of tools that

China has to hit the U.S. economy, and we saw that with the rare earth export controls that

...