On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had asked Chinese officials for a new round of trade talks in September, giving Beijing a chance to avert new tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese exports. Some Trump administration officials believe the U.S. has China over a barrel, the Journal says, but there's also "a steady rise in political pressure on President Trump to ease up on trade fights" from farm and business groups, and "Chinese officials said they have grown wary of the Trump administration's unpredictable decision-making process and may be hesitant to accept without a clear sign U.S. negotiators have authority to speak for the president."

Trump validated those concerns with a tweet on Thursday: "The Wall Street Journal has it wrong, we are under no pressure to make a deal with China, they are under pressure to make a deal with us. Our markets are surging, theirs are collapsing."

"The president's expectation that financial hardship will prompt Chinese President Xi Jinping to cave in a fresh round of diplomatic talks is misplaced," The Washington Post reports, citing analysts. Chinese markets have fallen significantly this year while U.S. markets are rising, "but unlike in the United States, the ups and downs of the Chinese stock market affect relatively few people, meaning sell-offs are unlikely to translate into pressure on Chinese leaders," the Post notes. And China's slowing economy — its economy is growing at about 6.5 percent — is due to a lot of factors that have nothing to do with the U.S. trade war.

"There's a lot of overly wishful thinking on the American side," Jeff Moon, a former U.S. trade negotiator, tells the Post. "Every economy has problems. We have ­trillion-dollar deficits. That doesn't mean either economy is in fundamental danger. It's a massive miscalculation." You can read more about the complexities of the trade war at The Washington Post. Peter Weber

In February 2017, Elon Musk announced that his SpaceX rockets would take two unidentified space tourists on a trip around the moon by the end of 2018. That timeline was pushed back to 2019 earlier this year, but on Thursday night, SpaceX dropped a surprise announcement.

Who is this mystery passenger? Probably not Musk, who dropped a clue — a Japanese flag emoji — on Twitter when asked about the space tourist. The original plan had been to send the two space tourists around the moon on a Dragon spacecraft powered by a Falcon Heavy rocket, which SpaceX successfully launched in May. The BFR, which Musk has described as the biggest rocket ever made, is still in the development stage.

If Musk does end up being one of the passengers on his around-the-moon vacation, he wouldn't be the only billionaire space tourism entrepreneur to ride on his own spacecraft. "Before the end of the year I hope to be sitting in a Virgin Galactic spaceship, going to space," Virgin chief Richard Branson told Bloomberg TV in May. Peter Weber

President Trump was the featured guest at a high-dollar private fundraiser at the Trump International Hotel on Wednesday night. Donors paid $100,000 a head to join the president for a roundtable discussion, followed by a $35,000-per-couple dinner and and opportunity to get their photo taken with Trump (for $70,000). The event raised $3 million for the joint RNC-Trump 2020 "Trump Victory" fundraising committee, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

So what insider information did attendees get for $100,000? A recitation of positive economic stats, for one. Trump also thanked a cardiologist he'd met in Indiana, Dr. Rim Al-Bezem, for warning him that Syria, Russia, and Iran were planning a massacre in Idlib province, prompting Trump to tweet out a warning to those three countries, the Journal reports. (In return, the Journal says, "Dr. Al-Bezem, whose identity hasn't been previously reported, told Mr. Trump on Wednesday that his tweet saved tens of thousands of lives, an analysis the president agreed with.") And Trump revealed plans to "rebrand" the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Trump has publicly suggested renaming NAFTA, trying out the United States–Mexico Trade Agreement (USMTA) after reaching a preliminary agreement with Mexico in August. But he had a new name Wednesday night, the U.S., Mexico, and Canada pact, or USMC, the Journal says. USMC, of course, is also the initials of the U.S. Marine Corps, as his chief of staff and defense secretary — both retire Marine generals — might remind him. If Canada doesn't agree to the changes to NAFTA he is demanding, Trump told the donors, he would drop the C, leaving the USM pact. That would cause confusion with a whole bunch of other things, from the University of Southern Mississippi to Ultimate Spider-Man and the U.S. Military.

NAFTA may have a "bad connotation," as Trump claims, but at least you can pronounce it — and it isn't also the three-letter international code for Thailand's Samui International Airport. Peter Weber

This week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined Instagram, and his new nickname for the State Department raised some eyebrows. "You know, between the Space Force and the Department of Swagger, this Trump administration has really given us an exciting look into what the government could be if it were run by a wealthy 12-year-old," Jimmy Kimmel said on Thursday's Kimmel Live. He paired the "Department of Swagger" idea with a specially created State Department new-employee orientation video designed to "fit in with the hip new attitude," and, well, maybe this all would have gone better with input from actual 12-year-olds. Watch below. Peter Weber

President Trump is not dealing well with the latest rounds of criticism about his intelligence and competence from Bob Woodward's new instant best-seller, Fear, and an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times, Gabriel Sherman reports in Vanity Fair. "The president has had it," a former West Wing official told the magazine. "When books like this come out, he tends to shut down and calls up people he sees on TV saying good things about him." Donald Trump Jr. is reportedly telling people he's concerned that his father isn't sleeping because his of obsession with the anonymous op-ed writer and nagging suspicion it could be almost anyone.

"Besides family, one of the only people Trump continues to trust is Stephen Miller," his senior policy adviser, Sherman writes, quoting a Republican close to the White House as explaining: "The op-ed has validated Miller's view, which was also Steve Bannon's, that there's an 'administrative state' out to get Trump." Bannon apparently believes this amounts to a coup, and Trump agrees, a person familiar with Trump's thinking told Sherman: "Trump believes there's a coup."

Miller has definitely proven himself to be a political survivor, Ed Kilgore says at New York. "But it is more than a little scary to think of one of the most powerful people on earth placing so much of his trust in a young man who cut his teeth in politics as a professional right-wing troll before beginning his official career with the hyperextremist Michele Bachmann," the former congresswoman and GOP presidential candidate. Peter Weber

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) brushed off a challenge from his left by actress and activist Cynthia Nixon in Thursday's New York Democratic primary, but progressives scored some big upsets in state Senate races. The highest profile of those was Julia Salazar's victory over 16-year incumbent state Sen. Martin Dilan in a northern Brooklyn district. Salazar, a 27-year-old democratic socialism running for office for the first time, doesn't face a Republican challenger in November.

Progressive challengers also unseated six of eight Democrats who formed a now-disbanded Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) that handed control of the state Senate to Republicans. Among those ousted was IDC leader Jeff Klein, who lost to Alessandra Biaggi, plus Jose Peralta, Jesse Hamilton, Marisol Alcantara, David Valesky, and Tony Avella. "In 2018, Democratic voters are in no mood for Democratic politicians who get too comfortable with Republicans," said Harry Enten at CNN. On the other hand, state Sen. Simcha Felder, a Democrat who voted to keep the minority Republicans in control of the Senate, fended off a challenger, Blake Morris.

The more liberal wing of the Democratic Party fared poorly in statewide races, however. Along with Cuomo's victory, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul survived a challenge from New York City Council member Jumaane Williams, and Cuomo-endorsed New York City Public Advocate Letitia "Tish" James beat three other Democratic candidates for the attorney general nomination, including anticorruption advocate Zephyr Teachout and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney. James will face Republican Keith Wofford in November. Either of them will be the first black New York attorney general, and James would also be the first female elected to the job. Peter Weber