From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression from the Wall Street Journal opinion page. I'm Jerry Baker,

editor at large of the journal. Thanks for joining us. Please do make sure you're subscribing.

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very much. This week, we are going to take a look at the latest news on the US economy, in particular. It's been another

busy week, of course, at the weekend President Trump announcing a kind of peace in our time deal

with China, removing most of the tariffs that were been imposed, particularly imposed on

Liberation Day back on April 2nd. We now have a deal, at least a temporary deal for 90 days,

whereby the US is imposing a total 30% tariff on imports from China, while China has a 10%

tariff on US exports. So where does that leave? The markets like this enormously of

huge leap in the stock market Monday. I'm recording this now on Tuesday. Big leap in stock market.

Strikingly also a pretty sharp rise in US Treasury yields back up close to their recent highs

that we saw in the midst of the concern, shall we say, in the tumult we saw over Liberation

Day tariffs. So there's some a little bit of concern there, although the dollar has come back

a little bit too. So by and large, people seem to think this is a good indication that the economy maybe now is in a better shape to avoid a recession that might have been caused by tariffs. Still a little concern about inflation. And of course, still uncertainty about tariffs. You know, we had a trade deal with the UK and now we have a kind of a deal with China, which just seemed to be all settling around, you know, the level of about 10% tariffs. You know, we had a trade deal with the UK, and now we have a kind of a deal with China,

which just seemed to be all settling around, you know, the level of about 10% tariffs for other countries, actually the 30% tariff for China is, of course, 10% on the basic tariffs and 20% for,

should we say, encourage China to deal more with its exports of fentanyl to the United States,

which, of course, is so damaging to so many lives here. But we seem to be looking at the kind of outlines of a broad tariff policy now that is looking at that sort of 10% level. That's still much higher than the US has had in the past. Could still do some damage to the economy, but the economy seems to be faring okay. At the same time, of course, we're still awaiting the outcome of these long deliberations in Congress over the tax bill, the big, beautiful bill. We'll see what happens there, whether or not, because there will be rising uncertainty about that if that isn't passed, about what that will mean to tax rates that could rise, of course, sharply next year if no bill has passed. So we're looking at improving prospects of the economy, where we've been in the last few weeks, but still with a high degree of uncertainty. So I'm going to dig into all of this this week with one of my favorite economists, one of our leading academic economists, Greg Mankew. Greg Mankew is a professor of economics at Harvard University. He served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush. He literally, literally writes the book on economics. He's the author of one of

the most, if not, he may correct me. If I'm wrong, it may be the most widely used economics textbook for

undergraduates. And of course, he's a very distinguished writer, professor and author. And one of the

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