Well, it has been a busy day with the announcement this morning of a pause in the trade war with China and President Trump leaving for a nearly week-long trip to the Middle East.

Let's delve a little deeper into those topics and more with Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

It's good to see you both.

Hello.

So we awoke this morning to news of a 90-day truce in President Trump's trade war with China.

Tam, based on your reporting, was this the plan all along, be tough on tariffs, hope that

China flinches and negotiate a deal? Or was just the turmoil in the markets and the economy

just too much for this administration to bear?

The plan all along is tariffs.

President Trump is someone who has talked about wanting there to be tariffs against pretty

much every country in the world on imports from everywhere.

He has always wanted to be tougher on China.

What happened here is essentially the tariff level that President Trump imposed on China

and then China retaliated and then the U.S. retaliated.

And then it got to a level where it was essentially a trade embargo.

Whether it's 80% or 100% or 135%, those goods are not being transferred between the countries.

And so where they are now is 30% for imports to the U.S.

and 10% for imports to China.

That is in the neighborhood of what President Trump had discussed on the campaign

trail, which at the time was roundly rejected by economists and others who said that that would

disadvantage American consumers, would make things more expensive, would hurt small businesses.

But now it's like, wow, those tariffs really

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