Donald Trump clearly wants the public to believe he recently struck a trade deal with China. The president did not actually reach such an agreement, but he’s leaned into his fictional narrative with great enthusiasm lately.
Last Thursday, for example, the Republican published an item to his social media platform, noting that he’d spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping about “the intricacies of our recently made, and agreed to, Trade Deal.” Soon after, during an Oval Office event, he again touted the same “trade deal.”
A day later, Trump posted a follow-up item, announcing the members of a delegation who would travel to London to meet with Chinese officials about “the Trade Deal.”
The bad news is that the “trade deal” in question does not exist, no matter how many times the American president pretends otherwise. The good news is that administration officials will actually have some discussions with their Chinese counterparts. NBC News reported:
Senior U.S. and Chinese officials will meet in London on Monday in an effort to de-escalate the bitter trade dispute between the world’s two biggest economies that has roiled the global economy, with China’s restrictions on critical minerals high on the agenda.
About a month ago, Trump announced what he characterized as a “deal” with China, but the closer one looked at the details, the more the truth came into focus. Georgetown University professor Abraham Newman wrote a great piece for MSNBC that explained, “While the U.S. did avoid a major economic calamity, this is not a deal. The U.S. blinked. … Far from some diplomatic coup, the U.S. climb down reflects the economic risks of maintaining such high tariffs.”
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal came to the same conclusion, noting, “[T]he China deal is more surrender than Trump victory.”
Complicating matters, while the White House and Beijing reached a tentative agreement that paused the two countries’ tit-for-tat tariffs, both countries have since accused each other of violating the agreement.
All of which brings to mind Peter Navarro, the White House’s top trade adviser, who boasted in April, “We’re going to run 90 deals in 90 days.” Navarro added that such a plan “is possible” in part because “the boss is going to be the chief negotiator.”
Roughly two months later, the grand total currently stands at zero. Generous observers might be inclined to give Trump credit for striking a deal with the U.K., but as The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank summarized in his latest column, that deal is really more of a “vaguely phrased framework with Britain that still hasn’t been made public.”
What’s more, a new Politico report added that a month after the agreement was announced, the U.S.-U.K. duties “remain in place” and “there is still no clear timeline for when they’ll lift.” Or to put it another way, two-thirds of the way into the “90 deals in 90 days” vow, the White House appears to be 90 deals short. Undeterred, Navarro returned to Fox Business late last week, where he was asked when the public should expect to see some breakthroughs. “We will have deals,” Navarro said. “It takes time. Usually, it takes months and years. In this administration, it’s gonna take more like days.” On average, the typical timeframe for a U.S. trade deal is roughly 30 months. That didn’t deter Navarro from pushing the “90 deals in 90 days” talking point in April, and it apparently didn’t stop him from claiming again last week that Team Trump will produce amazing results in a matter of days. The White House’s top trade adviser should be going out of his way right now to lower expectations after already having set an impossibly high bar. For reasons unknown, Navarro is doing the opposite, setting up the Trump administration for additional failure.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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