"President Donald Trump on Thursday will announce a new trade pact with the United Kingdom, the first of dozens of agreements he is seeking with countries around the world."

"In early April, Trump announced tariffs on more than 70 countries worldwide, but he then implemented a 90-day pause to allow for negotiations before they went into effect.... 'It is an agreement in concept. There’s a lot of details to be worked out,' Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Fox Business. Critics have expressed skepticism of the significance of the 'deals' the White House is attempting to negotiate in strikingly little time. Administration officials have also said not to expect the current 10 percent tariffs on Britain to be removed as part of the trade talks, intensifying doubts about any potential concessions...."

WaPo reports (free-access link). This is the "big news" teased yesterday.

What do we import from the U.K.? — you might wonder. I know I did. According to WaPo, it's mainly "high-end cars" and pharmaceuticals.

Here's the announcement:

"United States and Europe Forestall Trade War With Preliminary Agreement, Further Talks."

The NYT reports.

The announcement, made by Mr. Trump and the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, defused, for the moment, a trade battle that began with Mr. Trump’s tariffs on European steel and aluminum exports and threatened to escalate to its automobiles.

“We’re starting the negotiation right now, but we know very much where it’s going,” Mr. Trump said, standing next to Mr. Juncker at a hastily-scheduled appearance in the White House Rose Garden.

Mr. Juncker said, “I had the intention to make a deal today, and we have made a deal today.” He said both sides would hold off on further tariffs, and potentially drop the existing ones, unless they fail to agree on a deal to reduce tariffs, non-tariff barriers, and subsidies to zero.

Oh, no. Good news. There must be some way that it's actually bad news...

Why is there so little talk about the leaked transcripts of Trump's phone conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia?

The Washington Post must have thought it was worth it to drop these full transcripts. They had to worry about criticism, exposing the confidential communications of the President with world leaders, undermining the power and prestige of the American presidency. They had to have thought it was worth doing. Why dump all this verbiage? Did they think the sheer amount of material would have a devastating impact?

I thought we were going to see many, many articles picking into the details here, but the story seems to have already blown over. On the front page of the NYT website, the only reference to the transcripts is a little teaser under the heading "More in Politics." Coming in third after "Kushner Firm Said to Be Under Inquiry Over Visa Program" and "Trump Cites Familiar Argument in Ban on Transgender Troops" is "Trump Called New Hampshire a ‘Drug-Infested Den.’" Trump's calling New Hampshire a ‘Drug-Infested Den'" is incredibly inconsequential, but it's what I broke out too when I was reading the news yesterday.

Why are we not seeing more? I noticed some stories claiming the transcripts show Trump is an idiot, but every day I see stories saying Trump is an idiot. And from what I've read of the transcripts (not every word), I don't think they show idiocy, and I think they're going to take careful reading to understand how Trump was trying to work with the 2 leaders. I suspect that Trump-haters who undertook serious study of the language have decided it's best not to try, that a close examination of the text will only help Trump, and therefore the transcripts have rapidly become a non-story.

Now, I'm going to read the transcript with Peña Nieto, and I'll update to tell you what I'm seeing.

ADDED: I'm reading the whole transcript and dropping my thoughts here as I go. I'm amazed at how long each man talks when he gets his turn to speak. Nieto, speaking Spanish, goes first and quickly gets to looking for a solution to the disagreement about Mexico paying for the wall. He sees potential for "a win-win situation" if the 2 countries are "creative" about it.

Trump compliments Peña Nieto and talks about tariffs as a solution to the trade deficit. He goes on at length about it, and finally it's Peña Nieto who brings up the wall again:

Let me tell you that the best virtual wall that I think we can build between our two countries is to make sure that both countries have economic development.

Trump then takes up the subject of the wall. When times are good in Mexico, yes, there's a "virtual wall," but the real wall is needed for when there are tough times, he says. "We have enough people coming across, we want to stop it cold." Then he switches to the subject of what is obviously a shared interest with Mexico, drug gang warfare:

"Actually, I'm not as brash as you might think."

I'm reading the transcript from today's press conference with President Trump and UK Prime Minister Theresa May. I'll put the full transcript below the fold and just highlight one thing:

QUESTION: People are fascinated to know how you're going to get along with each other, you're so different; the hard-working daughter (inaudible), the brash TV extrovert. Have you found anything in common personally yet?

TRUMP: Actually, I'm not as brash as you might think. (LAUGHTER) And I can tell you that I think we're going to get along very well. You know, it's interesting because I am a people person. I think you are also, Theresa. And I can often tell how I get along with somebody very early, and I believe we're going to have a fantastic relationship....

MAY: ... I think we have already struck up a good -- good relationship. But you asked what we had in common. I think if you look at the approach that we're both taking, I mean, one of the things that we have in common is that we want to put the interests of ordinary working people right up there, center stage....

That's not what most of us mean by personal. It may be that the personal is political, but it would be a logical fallacy to think you can just flip that and say the political is personal. But I'm glad they put on a nice show of hitting it off. 

"That’s called business, by the way."/"That makes me smart."

Remarks inserted by Trump, as Hillary Clinton criticized him in last night's debate. Her emphasis is on Trump as another one of those rich people who amass too much wealth. He stresses the skill to take advantage of whatever the laws happen to be. The real question — I hope people know — is what should the laws be. Change the laws if they if they create the wrong opportunities for advantage, but don't flail people for making their private decisions in a way that serves their own interests.

Here's the context, from the transcript:

CLINTON: We had the worst financial crisis, the Great Recession, the worst since the 1930s. That was in large part because of tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class, took their eyes off of Wall Street, and created a perfect storm. In fact, Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis. He said, back in 2006, “Gee, I hope it does collapse, because then I can go in and buy some and make some money.” Well, it did collapse.

TRUMP: That’s called business, by the way.

***

CLINTON: So you've got to ask yourself, why won't he release his tax returns? And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe he's not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he's not as charitable as he claims to be. Third, we don’t know all of his business dealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.

TRUMP: That makes me smart. 

The way I see it is: Hillary Clinton has long been part of the government that is responsible for making the laws what they are. Donald Trump has been on the receiving end, trying to operate successfully within that system of rules. He is offering to transfer that that experience into decision-making about what the law should be. We are asked to trust one of them. There is no option to trust neither.

ADDED: In a debate characterized by interruptions, it's worth that the first interruption was Trump's "That's called business, by the way." Trump interrupted Clinton again in that same turn (to deny that he said "climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese" (which he did once tweet, perhaps as a joke)). Clinton never complained about that interruption. In fact, she took it as freeing her to interrupt, which she did the next time Trump got a turn. And it was quite something, with Trump also not complaining about interruption but reveling in the liberation to go back and forth:

Donald Trump in Wisconsin — doing the Charlie Sykes show.

Audio.

1. He didn't even know that picture of Heidi Cruz he retweeted was supposed to be a particularly bad picture of her.

2. Sykes replays that ad with women reading old Trump quotes about women. Trump's response is about all the women he's hired and put in high positions. Look at his actions. And he was "a celebrity," going on Howard Stern and such, not thinking about how it would sound if he were to run for office.

3. Trump has said Wisconsin is doing terribly. Won't that make Scott Walker look bad? Trump says he got the info from TIME Magazine.

4. Isn't Trump's claim to be a conservative just "a giant fraud"? Trump says he's a strong conservative, but trade might be an exception. When it comes to trade, he's for "smart trade."

5. What would happen to the price of goods if Trump imposed the tariff he's threatened? Trump says it will never happen. You just need a threat to get a good deal. Sykes asks how's that going to work if you just revealed it's a bluff? Sykes chuckles at what he clearly thinks is a gotcha. Trump ignores it.

6. If you can't unite Republicans, how can you unite the country? How can you beat Hillary? Well, he will beat Hillary, Trump asserts. And he's a businessman, and that's what this country needs. We're getting ripped off! Sykes breaks in: How are you going to work with Congress? How will you get along with Paul Ryan? I'm not surprised that Trump simply says he'll get along.

7. Sykes: "Mr. Trump, before you called into my show, did you know I'm a #NeverTrump guy?" Trump: "That I didn't know." Sykes splutters a bit, perhaps slightly wounded that Trump didn't care enough to find out about him. Trump makes a good interpersonal move, stating that he knows Sykes is "an intelligent guy" and "You know what's going on." And that's a segue back to an issue... NATO. Which is kind of amusingly backhanded, because Sykes wanted to talk about himself. But why is Sykes's #NeverTrumpishness significant to Trump? Trump goes on many shows and probably rarely is the interviewer a supporter. What does "NeverTrump" add to the standard opposition? It's not as if his other hostile interviewers are in a not-now-but-possibly-later frame of mind. They're all presumptively NeverTrumpers. How can it faze him?

8. Sykes gets back to the issue he began with, Trump's retweet of the photos of Heidi and Melania. Sykes couches it is some kind of statement about not beginning the show with the standard Wisconsin hospitality, but he immediately moves to badgering Trump about apologizing. Does Trump ever apologize? Sykes wants to know. Unsurprisingly, Trump brushes past the abstraction of whether he ever apologizes and goes on again about how Cruz owes him an apology for that ad with the GQ picture of Melania and there's a repetition of all the business that began the show: That ad was independent of the Cruz campaign (Sykes), but Cruz knew all about it (Trump). Sykes advises Trump about the people of Wisconsin: The people of Wisconsin would like to hear him say the candidates shouldn't be talking about each other's wives. Trump says that's great. He agrees... but Cruz started it. Sykes reacts to the "he started it" with: "We're not on a playground." Trump agrees, and: "My views are not playground views. My views are that our country is losing on every front...." And there he is back on the issues. He rattles off his issues — NATO, the Second Amendment — and the clock has run out and Sykes can only get in the thanks for coming on the show.