In Donald Trump’s first term, the president and his team successfully completed two trade deals. The first was a deal with South Korea, which tweaked the existing KORUS agreement, and the second was the USMCA agreement with Canada and Mexico, which tweaked the existing NAFTA agreement.

In both instances, however, the process was quite public: Trump wanted everyone to know what he was doing and with whom. There were private negotiations, of course, but no one saw a need to keep the existence of the talks under wraps. On the contrary, the White House was eager to alert the public to the fact that the talks were happening.

In the Republican’s second term, things are … different. The New York Times summarized matters this way:

A day after President Trump capitulated on his global reciprocal tariffs, he and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick insisted that one country after another was coming to them to make deals to avoid further economic pain. But the devil is in the details, and Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick offered very few. Instead, they said that things would work out, without saying much more.

As this week got underway, and much of the planet focused on the White House’s trade tariffs, the president published an item to his social media platform that said “more than 50” countries had contacted the administration about negotiating new trade deals. A few hours later, Trump revised the total, touting that it was “almost 70” countries that had reached out.

On Wednesday, when the Republican announced a 90-day “pause” for much of his tariffs agenda, he wrote that his decision was driven by the fact that “more than 75” countries that wanted to open negotiations with the administration.

The White House press office soon after said it would not disclose the names of the 75 countries. It also wouldn’t say why the list had to be kept secret.

Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, tried to clarify matters a day later, telling CNBC that the total number of countries is more than 75, but only about 15 of them had presented the administration with “explicit offers.” Hassett, a Trump trade adviser, made similar comments on Fox News.

But asked to list the trade partners, Hassett stuck to a familiar line. “I’m not going to name the countries yet,” he said.

It’s possible that the White House has legitimate diplomatic reasons to keep the details secret. But it’s also difficult to give Trump and his team the benefit of the doubt. This is, after all, a president who has repeatedly referenced conversations that did not occur in reality.

Complicating matters further, with a 90-day pause in place, it’s far from clear how the White House intends to strike multiple bilateral deals simultaneously over the course of a few months.

Given all of this, and Team Trump’s odd refusal to offer relevant details, the administration’s assurances should probably be taken with several grains of salt.