What did Donald Trump do today?

He did a lot of tap-dancing around tariffs.

Trump began the day with a post to his boutique microblogging site falsely claiming that a court had ruled in his favor in a case challenging his authority to decree taxes on American consumers on a whim:

A Federal Appeals Court has just ruled that the United States can use TARIFFS to protect itself against other countries. A great and important win for the U.S.

In reality, what happened is that an appeals court left in place a stay of the actual ruling by the Court of International Trade pending an expedited appeal. The original court found that there was no basis in law for Trump to use a power that the Constitution gives to Congress, and that the so-called "emergency" Trump was invoking did not exist.

The extension of the stay will not have much of an effect in practice, because Trump himself rolled back most of his blanket tariffs on goods imported from the rest of the world when markets and consumers rebelled, and other countries mostly refused to negotiate.

Trump also touted a "deal" today with China in which China would "allow" a 55% tax paid by American buyers on its rare earth mineral exports, in exchange for American universities remaining open to Chinese students. No firm details were available, the Chinese government did not confirm it, and the plan was not final or official when Trump announced it. But from Trump's description the "deal" involves American companies paying higher prices for raw materials that they cannot get in sufficient numbers from any country but China.

The number of Chinese students in American universities has been declining in recent years, and as the majority of them are in science and engineering programs that are being decimated by Trump's unilateral cancellation of research contracts, it's not clear how significant Trump "allowing" them to continue enrolling will be in the years to come.

Trump has been desperate for anything that will let him seem like he is making progress on his promise to do "90 deals in 90 days." The only other "deal" is a tentative agreement on certain products with the U.K.—a country the United States already has a trade surplus with—and that "deal" has, for unspecified reasons, not yet gone into effect.

With the self-imposed July 9th deadline for "deals" looming and no real progress in sight, Trump did one other thing today on tariffs: he announced via staff that he was doing such a good job making "deals" that he would likely "pause" the re-imposition of tariffs even longer.
 

Why does this matter?

• Presidents that are getting literally anything done could simply point to the results. 

• American trade policy and economic security is more important than getting fake wins for Donald Trump's ego.