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Good morning,

We start today with escalating trade tensions between the U.S. and China, a push for Ukraine to wade into American political crises and the Catholic Church’s first worldwide law requiring officials to report sexual abuse.

China trade deal hangs in the balance

Tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods increased on Friday after a pivotal round of trade talks between the U.S. and China on Thursday evening failed to produce an agreement to forestall the higher levies.

The White House said that talks will continue on Friday between top Trump administration officials and Chinese negotiators, but it remains uncertain whether the two sides can bridge the differences that have arisen over the past week.

The renewed brinkmanship has plunged the world’s two largest economies back into a trade war that had seemed on the cusp of ending.

Details: Barring any last-minute decision to rescind the tariff increase, the new 25 percent rate goes into effect Friday. But the higher tariffs would hit only products that leave China as of May 10, not those already in transit. That could provide some additional time for the two sides to reach an agreement.

Reactions: Global markets fell again. The S&P 500 had its fourth consecutive daily decline on Thursday.

Trump’s lawyer pushes Ukraine investigations

Rudolph Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, said that he will visit Kiev to meet with Ukraine’s president-elect, Volodymyr Zelensky, and talk to him about investigations involving former Vice President Joe Biden and Paul Manafort, the imprisoned former Trump campaign chairman.

Mr. Giuliani’s planned trip is part of a monthslong effort by Trump allies to build interest in the Ukrainian inquiries. They aim to discredit the special counsel’s inquiry and potentially damage Mr. Biden’s presidential prospects.

Details: The probes could touch on the origins of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and the involvement of Mr. Biden’s son in a company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch — which allies see as potentially beneficial to Mr. Trump.

Key quote: “We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do,” Mr. Giuliani said.

Menacing signals around North Korea relations

North Korea launched short-range ballistic missiles on Thursday for the second time in a week.

Hours later, the U.S. seized a North Korean ship for violating American-led sanctions by carrying banned exports of coal. There was also the public revelation of a huge, years-old base that appears to have been designed to hide and protect the North’s growing arsenal of long-range missiles.

Big picture: President Trump is running into the kind of road blocks and mutual grievances that doomed the efforts of his four immediate predecessors.

Complications: The diplomacy struggle comes as Mr. Trump is in an intense argument over trade with China — the country he needs most to tame the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — and as he appears to be veering toward a deeper confrontation with Iran.

Pope introduces rules for reporting abuse

Pope Francis imposed the Roman Catholic Church’s first worldwide law requiring officials to report sexual misconduct to their superiors, and empowering archbishops to investigate bishops.

The law does not require officials to contact law enforcement, as many critics have demanded. Church officials have said reporting child sexual abuse, in some parts of the world, would result in priests being killed.

What’s next: Victims of abuse and their advocates are likely to be underwhelmed by the rules, which do not address penalties for abuse.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the church’s top investigator of sex crimes, said the law “stands and there is room for further development,” he said, including “if you are guilty and you have been condemned of sexual abuse of minors, you are disqualified from ministry.”

Asked if he expected Francis to issue such a development in church law, he said, “I hope so.”

If you’re following the Indian elections …

Follow the money

More than $140 million worth of precious metals, about 68,000 kilograms (roughly 150,000 pounds) of drugs and almost $117 million in cash.

That and more has been confiscated by India’s Election Commission from candidates and parties during the national vote so far.

They were intended as giveaways in exchange for votes — an illegal yet shockingly common practice that illuminates the lack of transparency in campaign finances.

Spending in the ongoing election is estimated to reach about $8 billion. (For context, the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. cost roughly $6.5 billion.)

That spending is enabled by donations from individuals and companies that are almost impossible to track. And while there are limits on how much candidates spend, a lot goes unreported.

Still, in just one city-level election campaign in 2014, up to 64 percent of a candidate’s budget went toward gifts for voters.

Handing out freebies “is becoming a menace,” V.S. Sampath, the former head of the Election Commission, said in an interview with NDTV. It “shows how people are putting more faith on money than policies and programs,” he added. — Alisha Haridasani Gupta

Send us your feedback or questions on this series here.

Here’s what else is happening

Facebook: After The Times published an Op-Ed from Facebook’s co-founder arguing the company should be broken up and regulated, Facebook pushed back, saying: “You don’t enforce accountability by calling for the breakup of a successful American company.”

Venezuela: A group of American activists made itself at home in the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, saying they were there to keep the U.S. from going to war.

Montenegro: A court in Montenegro found 14 people, including two Russians suspected of being spies, guilty of plotting a coup in 2016 to prevent the tiny Balkan country from joining NATO.

U.S.: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the country was in a constitutional crisis and warned that House Democrats might move to hold more Trump administration officials in contempt of Congress if they continued their refusals to comply with subpoenas regarding the Mueller report.

Turkey: Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rival, Ekrem Imamoglu, is using what he saw in his brief stint in the mayor’s office — dozens of cars at his disposal and millions budgeted for officials’ homes — as ammunition in the lead-up to the June 23 election rerun.

Britain: A BBC radio personality has been fired after tweeting an image of a couple holding hands with a suited chimpanzee alongside the caption: “Royal Baby leaves hospital.”

UEFA: The New York Times has obtained documents outlining a proposal to calcify the Champions League into a competition dominated by a small group of elite clubs.

Snapshot: La Vigna di Leonardo in Milan, above, a new museum across from Santa Maria delle Grazie, is just one of the cultural sites in Italy’s capital of fashion and design recommended by our travel writer if you have 36 hours in the city.

Leonardo da Vinci: Three lesser-known Italian museums have snagged two prized da Vinci paintings from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death this year.

Summer drink brouhaha: A Times article that dismissed the Aperol spritz — a mix of Aperol, prosecco and a healthy orange wedge — set off a cocktail war on social media.

What we’re reading: This post on Lainey Gossip. Claire Cain Miller, who writes about gender for The Times, says it’s a smart and enlightening analysis of the introduction of the royal baby by Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. They used the occasion to send a message about inclusivity and a riposte to their critics, explains the blog’s co-founder and writer. “It’s Jedi-level P.R.”

Now, a break from the news

Cook: Crisp on the outside and custardy in the center, okonomiyaki are pan-fried Japanese pancakes that traditionally feature a filling of cabbage and pork belly.

Go: Our Frugal Traveler columnist attempted to get a taste of Prague without skimping on beer or the sights.

Watch: In the four-part docuseries “Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men,” which premieres tonight on Showtime, the group is human-scaled — determined, gifted, anxious, fallible.

See: Productions in London of classic plays — from Chekhov to Cy Coleman — feature strong female performances.

Smarter Living: Noise-canceling headphones regularly top lists of essential travel gadgets, but are they worth it? The absolute best of them merely reduce noise, and work best with low-frequency droning sounds, meaning a loud hum becomes a quieter hum. The roar on an airplane is a quieter roar. They also don’t work well for all sounds.

And a small body of evidence suggests that when it comes to decision making, indoor air may matter more than we have realized.

And now for the Back Story on …

Economic health and debt

A reader from Indiana asked a timely question about how to reconcile strong U.S. economic reports with the country’s trillions of dollars of debt.

Our financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin responds:

It is possible that a country like the U.S. can have a healthy economy and debt at the same time. The problem is “too much” debt, meaning a level that makes big investors unwilling to buy our treasuries at reasonable interest rates.

To the surprise of many economists, the U.S. has been able to take on vast debt without losing investor confidence. There is even a school of thought among progressives who support the Green New Deal that the U.S. can and should expand deficits. It’s called Modern Monetary Theory.

In the long term, it is hard to believe that increasing our debt will prove helpful, but many political leaders think shorter term, since they won’t be in their roles by the time the chickens come home to roost.

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Melina

Thank you
To Mark Josephson, Eleanor Stanford and Kenneth R. Rosen for the break from the news. You can reach the team at [email protected].

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about a House vote to hold U.S. Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress.
• Here’s today’s Mini Crossword puzzle, and a clue: Hit the books (5 letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• First-quarter results for The New York Times Company showed total paid subscriptions reaching 4.5 million.

Melina Delkic is a senior staff editor. @MelinaDelkic

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