China, EU Signal Desire to Cool Trade Fight
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President Trump proposes big cuts to health research, climate and education programs. Plus, the EU and China signal their desire to wind down the trade fight with Washington. And to end a busy week for earnings, we'll look at whether big tech can remain an island amid prevailing uncertainty.
There is certainly an element for the entire market of whistling past the graveyard, right? At the same time, if we go back to look at what happened during the COVID pandemic era, big tech stayed the course with its investments and came out with increased market share and market power and indeed market cap.
It's Friday, May 2nd. I'm Luke Vargas 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. The White House is set to release its fiscal 2026 budget today. A wish list of presidential priorities we exclusively report proposes more than $160 billion in cuts to non-defense discretionary spending. According to administration officials, that would represent a 22.6% reduction from projected fiscal 2025 spending and a with the budget blueprint envisioning far-reaching cuts to federal environmental, renewable energy, education, and foreign aid programs. Immune from the proposed cuts are Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, while the plan seeks spending increases for defense, border security, air and rail safety, veterans, and law enforcement. Lawmakers will likely spend months debating which elements of the plan should become law.
Meanwhile, President Trump has signed an executive order cutting off federal funding of public media, including PBS and NPR, saying that, quote, neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens. His efforts to shut down funding for public broadcasting are the latest of several battles with the media, including a defamation suit against Disney's ABC News last December and the suing of Paramount Global's CBS, which is currently in mediation with Trump. Officials at PBS and NPR didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Turning to trade now, we are seeing signs that two of the world's biggest economies are looking to resolve the trade war with the U.S. In an interview with the Financial Times, the EU's top trade negotiator, Maros Shevchevich, said the bloc could offer to buy $56 billion worth of U.S. goods.
Joshua Kirby covers the European economy for us and says the proposal includes buying American liquefied natural gas as well as agricultural products like soybeans.
Certain things the EU has definitely drawn a red line under when it comes to food standards and things like that, but they seem pretty willing to go ahead and agree to buy more American goods in a way that would, I think, redress the key point at the heart of the trade dispute from the perspective of President Trump, which is that the EU surplus that it runs in its goods trade is unfair from their perspective. And this would be a way of reducing that deficit.
At the same time, China has said it's considering starting talks with the U.S. to halt the trade war, but only if Washington shows sincerity through concrete measures like canceling tariffs. Trump has said that's a non-starter without significant concessions from Beijing, such as increased access to Chinese markets, even as he's also said that levies on Chinese goods are unlikely to remain anywhere near the current 145% figure. China's Commerce Ministry said it had noted repeated U.S. signaling on the possibility of adjustments to those tariffs but didn't give a timeline for possible trade talks with Washington. Shares of Apple are down off hours. While the company beat analyst expectations on quarterly sales yesterday, investors appear more focused on its tariff exposure.
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