Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and his advisors promised lightning for world trade negotiations with dozens of countries in April.
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro predicted “90 deals in 90 days.” “The administrative authorities have declared that other countries are eager to make concessions to avoid the massive import tax (duty) that Trump has been threatening to paint products from July 9th.
However, 90 days have come. And there are two tallies of trade transactions. One is the same as the UK and the other is the Vietnam. Trump has also announced a framework for his contract with China, but details of that remain fuzzy.
Trump has now extended the negotiation deadline until August 1st, messing around with threatened tariffs, leaving most of the global trading system three months ago. This is because companies delay investment, contract and employment decisions because they don’t know what the rules are.
“It’s basically a re-run,” said William Reinsh, a former US trader, who is currently an advisor to the think tank at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Trump and his team “doesn’t have the deal they want, so they’re piling up on the threat.”
This pattern repeated enough time to earn Trump The Label TaCo, an acronym coined by Robert Armstrong of the Financial Times, which refers to “trumping out chickens all the time.”
“This is a classic Trump. It threatens, more intimidates, but extends the deadline,” Reinsh said. “July 30 has arrived, if he hasn’t made a deal yet, will he do it again?” (Trump said Tuesday there is no extension.)
Drought represents a conflict with reality.
As Trump himself lately admitted in an interview with the Fox News channel last month, negotiating with every country on the planet has always been an impossible task. (“We have 200 countries,” the president said. “You can’t talk to all of them.”) And many trading partners, such as Japan and the European Union, could have always balked Trump’s demands, without receiving anything at least.
Chad Bowun, an economic advisor to the Obama White House and now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said “it’s really, really difficult to negotiate a trade deal,” and that it usually takes months to involve only one country or a small regional group. “What the administration is doing is negotiating these bundles at the same time.”
The drama began on April 2 – “The Day of Liberation” and Trump called it – taxation of up to 50% in countries where the US operates the trade deficit when the tariff-loving president unveiled the so-called baseline import tax on everyone and what he called “mutual.”
The 10% baseline tariff appears to stay here. Trump needs to raise money to patch his massive tax cut bill into holes exploding into the federal deficit.
In itself, baseline tariffs represent a massive change in American trade policy. When Trump returned to the White House, tariffs averaged around 2.5%, even lower before he began raising him in his first term.
But mutual tariffs are even bigger deals.
In announcing them, Trump effectively blows up rules governing world trade. For decades, the US and most other countries have been curbing tariff rates set through a series of complex negotiations known as the Uruguay Round. Countries were able to set their own tariffs, but under the “most preferred country” approach, they were unable to charge more countries than they had claimed by another country.
Currently, Trump is setting tariff rates and is creating a “TaylorMade Trade Plan for All Countries on this planet” in the words of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
But investors are recoiled with bold plans, fearing that it will disrupt trade and undermine the global economy. For example, the tariffs on Trump’s release date caused a four-day defeat in the global financial markets. Trump blinked. Less than 13 hours after mutual tariffs occurred on April 9th, he suddenly stopped them for 90 days, giving the nations time to negotiate with the trade team.
Despite the Trump administration’s expression of confidence, talks have turned into slower.
“The country has its own politics, its own domestic politics,” Reinsh said. “Trump ideally constituted this, so all concessions will be made by others, and the US concessions are: We will not impose tariffs.”
However, countries like Korea and Japan had to “come back with something.” He said, “We must get some concessions from the US to make this seem like a favorable agreement for both parties and not a foldable agreement.”
For example, Japan wanted relief from another Trump tariff. This collected 50% steel and aluminum.
The Trump administration can also be hesitant to reach a deal with the US while conducting investigations that could bring new tariffs on a variety of products, including drugs and semiconductors.
Frustrated by the lack of progress, Trump wrote to Japan, South Korea and 12 other countries on Monday, saying that if they were unable to reach an agreement, he hit them with tariffs on August 1. The taxation was similar to what he announced on April 2nd. For example, Japan is 25% compared to 24% announced on April 2nd.
Trump signed an agreement with the UK last month. Among other provisions, it has reduced US tariffs on UK automobile and aerospace products while opening the UK market for beef and ethanol. However, the US has maintained baseline tariffs on UK products, highlighting Trump’s commitment to a 10% tax, according to the US Department of Commerce, despite the US operating a trade surplus for the 19th consecutive year.
July 2nd. Trump has announced his contract with Vietnam. Vietnamese have agreed to leave us to the state’s tax exemption while accepting a 20% tax on exports to the US, Trump said, but no details on the contract have been released.
The biased deal with Vietnam suggests that Trump can successfully use tariff threats to bully concessions from the smaller economy.
“They can’t really negotiate the same way (the European Union) or South Korea or Japan (OR) Canada can negotiate with the United States,” said Dan McCarthy, principal at McCarthy Consulting and a former official with the Biden administration’s US trade representative. ”
However, fighting over a deal with a larger trading partner may remain more demanding.
“The US is gambling that these countries will eventually be threatened and folded,” Reinsh said. “And the longer the nations grow, the longer Trump does not generate any more deals, the more desperate he becomes, and he lowers his standards.
“It’s a huge game of chickens of sorts.”
Original issue: July 9, 2025, 12:41pm EDT
