One of the more peculiar developments at the White House last week was an expected dispute about negotiations — or lack thereof — between the United States and China. The more Donald Trump tried to talk about the issue, the murkier the truth became.
The basic elements of the story seemed straightforward: The White House assumed that enormous trade tariffs on China would inevitably force Beijing to come crawling to U.S. officials, begging for some kind of deal. Those assumptions were quickly proven wrong — though the administration seemed eager to pretend otherwise.
For much of last week, Trump and his team said negotiations between the U.S. and China were underway. In each instance, Chinese officials insisted otherwise, declaring publicly that the White House’s claims were simply untrue and urging the administration to “stop creating confusion.”
Asked directly about China’s denial, Trump told reporters, “Well, they had a meeting this morning.” Asked who “they” were, the American president replied, “It doesn’t matter who ‘they’ is.”
On ABC News’ “This Week,” host Martha Raddatz tried to get Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to clarify matters. That didn’t go well. “I don’t know if President Trump has spoken with President Xi,” Bessent said about a subject he probably ought to have known more about.
Alas, that was not the administration’s only sign of trouble on one of the president’s top policy priorities. Politico reported:
The United States has already struck 200 trade deals, President Donald Trump said in an interview this week — but he refused to say with whom. … Pressed on which countries he had made deals with, Trump refused to say, nor did he clarify the terms of the agreements.
Shortly after Trump backed down on trade tariffs, pausing much (but not all) of his failing policy, the White House emphasized that the shift would be temporary. In fact, Peter Navarro, the president’s highly controversial trade adviser, said the move would open the door to exciting new opportunities that would unfold very quickly.
“We’re going to run 90 deals in 90 days,” Navarro told Fox Business a couple of weeks ago, adding that such a plan “is possible” in part because “the boss is going to be the chief negotiator.”
It was against this backdrop that Time magazine asked the president why there haven’t yet been any trade deals.
“No, there’s many deals,” Trump replied, adding, “I’ve made all the deals.”
Time’s reporters, understandably confused, asked, “Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them?” Instead of answering directly, the president said, “I’ve made 200 deals.”
Seeking clarification, Time’s reporters asked, “You’ve made 200 deals?” to which Trump replied, “100%.”
Pressed further, the president eventually said, “Because the deal is a deal that I choose.” As part of the same exchange, he added:
What I’m doing is I will, at a certain point in the not too distant future, I will set a fair price of tariffs for different countries. These are countries — some of them have made hundreds of billions of dollars, and some of them have made just a lot of money. Very few of them have made nothing because the United States was being ripped off by every, almost every country in the world, in the entire world. So I will set a price, and when I set the price, and I will set it fairly according to the statistics, and according to everything else.
So, Trump is apparently of the opinion that he’s set tariff rates on other countries, which the public should perceive as a “trade deal.”
Or put another way, instead of successfully negotiating deals, the president wants to change the meaning of what a “deal” is.
All of which suggests those who took the “90 deals in 90 days” boast seriously should probably start lowering their expectations.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
