Hours before President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs were set to take effect in April, he said, “These countries are calling us up, kissing my a**. They are dying to make a deal. ‘Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything, I’ll do anything, sir.”
Then after he initially paused those tariffs in April, his top trade advisor, Peter Navarro, promised the president was going to achieve “90 (trade) deals in 90 days.”
It’s been 111 days, however, and only two deals have been finalized, one of which – with China – expires in two weeks. Trump has announced a handful of trade agreements over the past month with trading partners, but until they’re finalized, they’re essentially rough drafts. And in the case of one of those rough drafts, it’s not even entirely clear what the draft says. Trump announced a “deal” with Vietnam in a Truth Social post earlier this month, but the Vietnamese government hasn’t publicly confirmed any details.
So what happened to all those promised deals?
As Trump’s original 90-day “reciprocal” tariff deadline of July 8 approached, Trump and members of his administration began to change their tone, pointing fingers at other trading partners for not negotiating in “good faith.”
“I think what President Trump is concerned about is the quality of the deals, not the quantity,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview earlier this month.
Then, after Trump extended the July 8 deadline to August 1, he began sending out a flurry of letters to heads of state informing them of the tariff rates their respective countries’ goods would face absent a trade deal.
“A letter means a deal,” the president said at a Cabinet meeting on July 8.
