Trump Flies to Beijing Amid Iran Intel Rebuke, 6% Inflation

The US-Israeli war on Iran continued to define Washington's day, with the war's economic spillover at home and a classified intelligence assessment that cut against the administration's own narrative all landing as President Trump departed for Beijing.

Wholesale and producer-price indices both rose 6% year-over-year in April — the largest 12-month increase since February 2023 — with the Bureau of Labor Statistics attributing the move to a 15.6% monthly surge in fuel costs. The data, released a day after a hot consumer print, dimmed the prospects of a Federal Reserve rate cut and arrived with annual CPI at 3.8%, the highest since May 2023. An Economist/YouGov survey of 1,549 respondents found 59% of Americans said the economy was getting worse against just 15% who said it was improving. The Pentagon announced framework agreements with Anduril, CoAspire, Leidos and Zone 5 to acquire 10,000 low-cost containerized missiles under the new LCCM program, plus a separate Castelion deal for a minimum 500 Blackbeard hypersonic missiles a year with authority sought to buy more than 12,000 across five years — explicitly framed as a stock replenishment after the war on Iran. A separate government report priced the proposed Golden Dome national missile-defence system at $1.3 trillion over 20 years, drawing on Trump's January 2025 executive order as the blueprint.

The diplomatic posture stayed brittle. Trump rejected Tehran's latest peace proposals — passed via Pakistan — as "garbage" and "totally unacceptable," and called the April 8 ceasefire "on massive life support." Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said separately the United States could end the ceasefire and resume strikes. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the House on Wednesday that Iran was "frighteningly close" to a nuclear weapon and "weeks away" from enriching one ton of uranium to weapons-grade. A New York Times-reported classified assessment circulated in early May contradicted the administration's "decimated" framing — Iran had retained roughly 70% of its prewar missile stockpile and restored operational access to 30 of 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz.

The Russia file moved in the opposite direction. Trump, departing for China, said the end of Russia's war on Ukraine was "very close" even as Moscow resumed large-scale attacks after the US-brokered three-day ceasefire expired May 11 — at least six were killed in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, with President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly saying Moscow had shown no intention of ending the war.

The US institutional and legal picture continued to move. A federal appeals court temporarily paused a lower court's ruling against Trump's 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act, restoring administrative cover for the duty while litigation proceeds. The Trump administration filed a lawsuit to use eminent domain to seize about 14 acres of Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces land at the base of Mount Cristo Rey for border wall construction, offering roughly $183,000 as compensation. The Department of Homeland Security named David Venturella, the official overseeing detention-centre contracts, as acting director of ICE; Kyle Diamantas became acting commissioner of the FDA after Marty Makary's departure. The Supreme Court enters the same week with 35 cases pending, including Trump's authority to fire independent-agency heads, birthright-citizenship restrictions, transgender-athlete bans, gun rights, campaign-finance limits and mail-in ballot deadlines, with rulings expected through June.

A separate Foreign Affairs analysis raised the structural question for Trump's eastward trip. It argued China had gained an effective veto over US national security measures, including export controls, as part of the deal Trump and Xi endorsed at Busan in October 2025 — Washington had withdrawn a regulation closing a semiconductor-sales loophole as part of that arrangement. The interpretation framed the Beijing summit, opening this week, as the structural confrontation around AI export controls and Taiwan rather than another tariff round.