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President Donald Trump and his team promised ‘90 trade deals in 90 days,’ but so far he has only “framework” agreements for two countries in place.
Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs ushered in on April 2 are set to go into effect on July 8.
Skeptics said little progress has been made on making trade deals, leaving American businesses to deal with economic uncertainty.
“We were promised ‘90 deals in 90 days.’ What we have at this point are ‘general frameworks’ for the U.K. and China,” Marc Short, who served in Trump’s first administration as legislative affairs director, told Politico.
Short, who also served as Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, said the Trump administration will “hail these general frameworks as really significant breakthrough deals,” but other countries are watching closely.
“Other countries are seeing that, if I wait this out, [Trump’s] going to be overly sensitive to bond market yields, or he’s going to get himself into trouble, and then he’s going to need to get out of it with a deal,” Short added.
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This week’s trade deal progress with China has been touted as a major win by the White House. “We’re in a solid place going forward in these negotiations, because the country that could most push back here, tried to push back and it didn’t really go well for them,” a White House official told Politico, adding that the administration “feels good” about negotiations with others.
Trump declared the deal was “done” pending a “final approval” by him and Chinese President Xi Jinping in a Truth Social post Wednesday.
Last month the U.K. achieved a series of significant carve-outs from sweeping U.S. tariffs on its carmakers, steelworks and farmers.
But the odds of scoring “90 deals in 90 days,” as White House trade adviser Peter Navarro touted in April, are now looking unlikely.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it was “highly likely” the July 8 deadline could slide for countries who are engaging in good faith negotiations with the U.S.
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“There are 18 important trading partners. We are working toward deals on those, and it is highly likely that those countries — or trading blocs, as in the case of the EU — who are negotiating in good faith, we will roll the date forward to continue good faith negotiations,” Bessent told the House Ways and Means Committee this week.
Trump also suggested he would be open to deadline extensions but said he did not believe it was “a necessity.”
“We’re rocking in terms of deals,” Trump said Wednesday. “We’re dealing with quite a few countries and they all want to make a deal with us.”
The president said that letters specifying the terms of trade deals with dozens of countries would be going out in the coming weeks.
“At a certain point, we’re just going to send letters out … saying, ‘This is the deal. You can take it, or you can leave it,’” Trump said. “So at a certain point we’ll do that. We’re not quite ready.”
