{"id":360,"date":"2025-07-09T16:41:42","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T16:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/?p=360"},"modified":"2025-07-21T14:24:57","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T14:24:57","slug":"trumps-trade-blitz-produces-few-deals-but-lots-of-uncertainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/09\/trumps-trade-blitz-produces-few-deals-but-lots-of-uncertainty\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s trade blitz produces few deals but lots of uncertainty"},"content":{"rendered":"

By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump and his advisers promised a lightning round of global trade negotiations with dozens of countries back in April.<\/p>\n

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro predicted \u201c90 deals in 90 days.\u2019\u2019 Administration officials declared that other countries were desperate to make concessions to avoid the massive import taxes \u2013 tariffs \u2014 that Trump was threatening to plaster on their products starting July 9.<\/p>\n

But the 90 days have come and gone. And the tally of trade deals stands at two \u2013 one with the United Kingdom and one with Vietnam. Trump has also announced the framework for a deal with China, <\/a> the details of which remain fuzzy.<\/p>\n

Trump has now extended the deadline for negotiations to Aug. 1<\/a> and tinkered with his threatened tariffs, leaving the global trading system pretty much where it stood three months ago \u2014 in a state of limbo as businesses delay decisions on investments, contracts and hiring because they don\u2019t know what the rules will be.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a rerun, basically,\u2019\u2019 said William Reinsch, a former U.S. trade official who\u2019s now an adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. Trump and his team \u201cdon\u2019t have the deals they want. So they\u2019re piling on the threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pattern has repeated itself enough times to earn Trump the label TACO<\/a> \u2014 an acronym coined by The Financial Times\u2019 Robert Armstrong that stands for \u201cTrump Always Chickens Out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is classic Trump: Threaten, threaten more, but then extend the deadline,\u201d Reinsch said. \u201cJuly 30 arrives, does he do it again if he still doesn\u2019t have the deals?\u2019\u2019 (Trump said Tuesday that there will be no more extensions.)<\/p>\n

The deal drought represents a collision with reality.<\/p>\n

Negotiating simultaneously with every country on earth was always an impossible task, as Trump himself belatedly admitted last month in an interview with the Fox News Channel. (\u201cThere\u2019s 200 countries,\u2019\u2019 the president said. \u201cYou can\u2019t talk to all of them.\u2019\u2019) And many trading partners \u2014 such as Japan and the European Union \u2014 were always likely to balk at Trump\u2019s demands, at least without getting something in return.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really, really hard to negotiate trade agreements,\u201d which usually takes several months even when it involves just one country or a small regional group, said Chad Bown, an economic adviser in the Obama White House and now senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. \u201cWhat the administration is doing is negotiating a bunch of these at the same time.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

The drama began April 2 \u2013 \u201cLiberation Day,\u201d Trump called it \u2014 when the tariff-loving president announced a so-called baseline 10% import tax on everybody and what he called \u201creciprocal\u2019\u2019 levies of up to 50%<\/a> on countries with which the United States runs trade deficits.<\/p>\n

The 10% baseline tariffs appear to be here to stay. Trump needs them to raise money to patch the hole<\/a> his massive tax-cut bill is blasting into the federal budget deficit.<\/p>\n

By themselves, the baseline tariffs represent a massive shift in American trade policy: Tariffs averaged around 2.5% when Trump returned to the White House and were even lower before he started raising them in his first term.<\/p>\n

But the reciprocal tariffs are an even bigger deal.<\/p>\n

In announcing them, Trump effectively blew up the rules governing world trade<\/a>. For decades, the United States and most other countries abided by tariff rates set through a series of complex negotiations known as the Uruguay round. Countries could set their own tariffs \u2013 but under the \u201cmost favored nation\u2019\u2019 approach, they couldn\u2019t charge one country more than they charged another.<\/p>\n

Now Trump is setting the tariff rates himself, creating \u201ctailor-made trade plans for each and every country on this planet,\u2019\u2019 in the words of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.<\/p>\n

But investors have recoiled at the audacious plan, fearing that it will disrupt trade and damage the world economy. Trump\u2019s Liberation Day tariffs, for instance, set off a four-day rout in global financial markets. Trump blinked<\/a>. Less than 13 hours after the reciprocal tariffs took effect April 9, he abruptly suspended them for 90 days, giving countries time to negotiate with his trade team.<\/p>\n

Despite the Trump administration\u2019s expressions of confidence, the talks turned into a slog.<\/p>\n

\u201cCountries have their own politics, their own domestic politics,\u201d Reinsch said. \u201cTrump structured this ideally so that all the concessions are made by the other guys and the only U.S. concession is: We don\u2019t impose the tariffs.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

But countries like South Korea and Japan needed \u201cto come back with something,\u2019\u2019 he said. Their thinking: \u201cWe have to get some concessions out of the United States to make it look like this is a win-win agreement and not a we-fold-and-surrender agreement. \u201d<\/p>\n

Japan, for example, wanted relief from another Trump tariff \u2014 50% levies on steel and aluminum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Countries may also be hesitant to reach a deal with the United States while the Trump administration conducts investigations that might result in new tariffs on a range of products, including pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.<\/p>\n