WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump on Monday retreated on the Chinese tariffs portion of his trade war against the world, calling it a great success that would “be fantastic for us.” “They’ve agreed to open China, fully open China,” he told reporters just prior to setting off to the Middle East for his first extended foreign trip since returning to the White House in January. The new 30% rate on most Chinese goods is a small fraction of the 145% rate he had set last month, but is still three times the 10% rate he has said will be a baseline for all foreign imports, with higher 25% rates for steel, aluminum and automobiles. The lower rate will last 90 days with the expectation of a broader agreement with China, but Trump said that even if the rate goes higher, it will likely not go back up to 145%. “You know, at 145, you’re really decoupling because nobody’s going to buy,” he said. “But they’d go substantially higher.” In any case, even if Trump settles on a broad tariff of 10% for all foreign goods, it would be the largest import tax since the one that deepened and prolonged the Great Depression nearly a century ago and would impose a new tax on American importers of more than $2 trillion over a decade. American consumers would ultimately pay that in the form of higher prices. “The president has not-quite-a-deal with China that manages to temporarily unwind the self-inflicted damage from ‘Liberation Day,’” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a conservative economist and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “Other than selling a few planes to the UK, he has nothing to show for his tariff fusillade except a weakened US economy.” As he does almost every time he discusses his more targeted tariffs on Chinese goods during his first term, which he claimed he had done to force China to buy more agricultural products from the United States, Trump lied about their effect. “You know, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China,” he said. In fact, neither China nor Chinese exporters paid the United States a dime. US tariffs are collected by US Customs from American importers, primarily wholesalers and manufacturers, at US ports of entry. Monday’s retreat on the China tariffs repeats what Trump did with his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on all other countries. He announced higher import tax rates on dozens of nations not based on what those countries charge on American goods, as he claimed, but rather based solely on the size of a country’s surplus with the United States — a largely meaningless metric. He announced those rates with great fanfare on his April 2 “Liberation Day,” but then put a 90-day moratorium on them just a week later after the market for US treasuries showed that purchasers around the world were losing confidence in the US dollar. Trump’s remarks came at a news conference announcing his executive order that, by fiat, forces drug companies to charge Medicare no more for medications than the lowest amount they charge for the same drug anywhere in the world. The issue has been a staple for many Democrats for decades, who have unsuccessfully pushed for legislation addressing the disparity in how pharmaceutical companies price their products globally. Whether Trump has the authority to force drug companies to change their prices with merely a signature, rather than an actual law passed by Congress, is unclear, and the order may be blocked in court.