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--:-- Annie Minoff: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Tuesday, July 8th.
--:-- Gavin Bade: So, Gavin, you cover trade. What's gotten you through the past few days? Is it mindfulness meditation, Red Bull? What's your go-to?
--:-- Annie Minoff: I'm a coffee drinker and definitely had a lot of that and some green tea. You know, we've been feeling very under the gun with all these trade negotiation announcements and the letters.
--:-- Gavin Bade: You just don't really know what's coming next with this administration. But we're rolling with the punches, so to speak.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Our colleague Gavin Bade is under the gun because he's been covering President Trump's trade policy, which means every few months things get pretty intense.
--:-- Gavin Bade: Like back in April, when Trump first announced his sweeping Liberation Day tariffs. April 2nd, 2025 will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed.
--:-- Annie Minoff: After the announcement, the market tanked. And a week later, Trump paused the tariffs. The goal of that 90-day pause was to cut as many deals with U.S. trading partners as the administration could.
--:-- Gavin Bade: Here's Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro. We've got 90 deals in 90 days possibly pending here. 90 deals in 90 days. And we're going to get this done for the American people.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The idea was they were giving nations time to negotiate narrow trade pacts or trade deals with the United States. So they were trying to, you know, do dozens of these deals at the same time.
--:-- Gavin Bade: A lot of balls in the air when it came to these different negotiations. That 90-day tariff pause was due to expire tomorrow. But those 90 deals have proven elusive.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Instead, the past three months have been marked by stalled negotiations and just a handful of trade agreements. And yesterday, that 90-day deadline was pushed.
--:-- Gavin Bade: I think that they figure they're close on a lot of these deals, but not quite there yet. And so if we have a little bit more time, maybe they can get the deal that they want.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So up the pressure, up the ante, and maybe we revisit this in a couple weeks.
--:-- Gavin Bade: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Tuesday, July 8th. Coming up on the show, why 90 deals in 90 days didn't happen.
--:-- Annie Minoff: How unusual and ambitious was this kind of 90-day sprint to rework the U.S.'s trade relationships?
--:-- Gavin Bade: I would say it was a proposal of unprecedented ambition from the U.S. government.
--:-- Annie Minoff: You know, trade deals usually take years, months if not years, to fully negotiate.
--:-- Gavin Bade: And, you know, typical trade deals will cover a lot of different subjects, right? You know, everything from market access for agricultural products to, you know, industrial tariffs, you know, sometimes subsidies, sometimes labor practices.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Those very full, full fat trade deals, as you might call them, take years to negotiate.
--:-- Gavin Bade: These were always going to be much narrower, right? They were trying to, you know, pick out a few specific irritants that the U.S. has with other economies and try to use the speed and pressure of these trade negotiations to kind of knock them down.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Yeah, take some wins and move on to the next one. Indeed that what they wanted to do Do things in Trump time as they like to say
--:-- Gavin Bade: And about a month into Trump pause that approach seemed to be bearing some fruit President Trump announcing that the U.S. will strike a trade deal with the U.K.
--:-- Annie Minoff: In May, the administration came to an agreement with the United Kingdom. U.S. farmers got increased access to the U.K. market, and the U.K. got a break on steel and auto tariffs.
--:-- Gavin Bade: The 27.5% tariff announced for U.K. cars is reduced to 10%.
--:-- Annie Minoff: At the time, it looked like, oh, they've got a deal that's still, you know, a little bit before the deadline, and maybe they're going to be able to pull this off.
--:-- Gavin Bade: We've got some momentum. We've got countries that are coming to talk to us. And so they were pretty optimistic at that point.
--:-- Annie Minoff: It was a first notch in the trade team's belt. And then the U.S. had a second success. This time, it was an agreement with China that lowered tariffs while the two countries continued to negotiate.
--:-- Gavin Bade: The United States and China agreeing on a framework that could lead to a trade deal. The U.S. and China agree to reduce tariffs for the next 90 days.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And the relationship between the two nations is, quote, excellent.
--:-- Gavin Bade: But that's where the successes stopped. Beyond the U.K. and China, Gavin says trade talks with other countries have stalled.
--:-- Annie Minoff: What they found out is other countries have trade protections for a reason, just as we do.
--:-- Gavin Bade: And you can't simply forget that they have domestic politics, right?
--:-- Annie Minoff: I think a good example is the Japanese example here.
--:-- Gavin Bade: Japan, an early target for the U.S. trade team. Did people think that this was going to be a hard deal to cut?
--:-- Annie Minoff: I think the Japanese deal was one of the lower-hanging fruit for the Trump administration, or at least the prospect of a Japanese deal was.
--:-- Gavin Bade: Remember, this is perhaps the U.S.'s closest ally in Asia and one of its closest allies around the world.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The negotiating teams get along pretty well.
--:-- Gavin Bade: And the Japanese trade negotiator, he had been to Washington, D.C. no fewer than seven times.
--:-- Annie Minoff: They were doing everything right in order to get a deal with the United States, and the U.S. really wanted one as well.
--:-- Gavin Bade: But a lot of these, you know, once you started to get into the minutia of this deal, it got a lot more difficult.
--:-- Annie Minoff: As the two sides talked, one major sticking point was tariffs on specific industries.
--:-- Gavin Bade: And particularly with Japan, the automotive industry, the car tariffs are huge.
--:-- Annie Minoff: In March, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on foreign cars, including those from Japan.
--:-- Gavin Bade: And that's a lot of cars. The U.S. imports $40 billion worth of passenger vehicles from Japan every year.
--:-- Annie Minoff: This is also coming at an especially tricky time for Japan, which has a big election coming up.
--:-- Gavin Bade: Japan's upper house of parliament has an election on July 20th.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The prime minister's government is already a minority government. They're under a lot of pressure.
--:-- Gavin Bade: And so they can't come back and say, hey, we secured a deal with the United States that left in place 25 percent auto tariffs.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I mean, privately, we've heard that Japanese officials say, you know, that would put our entire government at risk.
--:-- Gavin Bade: It's a very, very touchy subject for good reason in Japan, because the automotive sector is so integral to their economy.
--:-- Annie Minoff: These tariffs on cars have remained a roadblock in the negotiations.
--:-- Gavin Bade: Japan's prime minister said in June that the country would do everything it could to protect its automobile industry.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Then last week, Trump appeared to cut off talks with Tokyo.
--:-- Gavin Bade: In an interview on Fox News, he suggested he might send the country a letter.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I'm going to send letters. That's the end of the trade deal. I could send one to Japan. Dear Mr. Japan, here's the story. You going to pay a 25 tariff on your cars you know His kind of reaction was just to say hey we going to just send you a letter We just going to slap these tariffs on you and that be what you pay
--:-- Gavin Bade: And you know if you ready to come to the table and do what we want, then fine.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But, you know, Trump is totally fine with applying these tariffs back on again.
--:-- Gavin Bade: It wasn't just Japan. Over the last 90 days, Trump and his aides have found it difficult to strike deals with trade partners all around the globe, from Europe to Canada to South Korea.
--:-- Annie Minoff: A lot of nations have these touch points, these impasses, where it's going to be very difficult to do a deal, especially in short order.
--:-- Gavin Bade: With just a few days before the deadline, though, the White House did seem to land one more deal. That deal is after the break.
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--:-- Annie Minoff: Last week, the Trump administration seemed to have a breakthrough. Trump announced a deal with a key trading partner, Vietnam.
--:-- Gavin Bade: And on its face, the term sounded pretty favorable to the U.S. So Trump on Truth Social posted that he had come to an agreement with the government of Vietnam, the Vietnamese leader, and this was going to be for zero tariffs on any U.S. goods that are going into Vietnam.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And in return, what Vietnam would get was 20 percent tariffs for its products coming into the U.S.
--:-- Gavin Bade: But they said if there are trans-shipped products that are coming through Vietnam, they will be tariffed at a higher rate. They'll be tariffed at 40 percent instead of 20.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So to recap, a 20% tariff on Vietnamese goods. But if goods are coming from another country through Vietnam, then they get a higher tariff.
--:-- Gavin Bade: This practice, transshipment, has been a major issue for the Trump administration.
--:-- Annie Minoff: That's especially true in Southeast Asia, where China has relied on small neighboring countries to get around American trade barriers for years.
--:-- Gavin Bade: So this deal that Trump announced seemed like a big win for the president and his trade team.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But Gavin says there's just one problem.
--:-- Gavin Bade: We've not seen any documentation from either government to certify that there actually is a deal, much less anything that's in the deal.
--:-- Annie Minoff: You know, no executive orders from the White House, no further statements besides, you know, a couple auditory comments from the press team, nothing from the Vietnamese.
--:-- Gavin Bade: And so really, beyond Trump's truth social posts, there is no evidence that there is any deal of any kind on this.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And as a matter of fact, we reported that there are some details that are still being worked out here.
--:-- Gavin Bade: So this is far, far short of a, you know, signed, sealed, delivered trade deal with Vietnam.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The Vietnamese embassy in Washington didn't respond to requests for comment.
--:-- Gavin Bade: So for those keeping score at home, as of earlier this week, how many of those 90 deals in 90 days did we have?
--:-- Annie Minoff: I think you could say at most three.
--:-- Gavin Bade: You have the U.K. deal, which, while being narrow, was at least, you know, a framework was put out there, a very short document was put out there about it.
--:-- Annie Minoff: You had this tariff truce with China, which similarly, no one's seen any documentation of.
--:-- Gavin Bade: The White House has called it confidential, but they did agree to lower tariffs on China.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So there was movement there, but no one's seen any of those details.
--:-- Gavin Bade: And then this sort of like phantom trade deal with Vietnam, for which we have no documentation whatsoever.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So I think if you being generous you could say three deals
--:-- Gavin Bade: By Monday morning of this week the July 9th deadline was fast approaching and no more deals were materializing
--:-- Annie Minoff: So Trump amped up the pressure on some of the U.S.'s trading partners.
--:-- Gavin Bade: That pressure took the form of letters, which Trump posted publicly on his social media.
--:-- Annie Minoff: He starts issuing these letters to other nations outlining what they would pay in tariffs.
--:-- Gavin Bade: And so this is literally saying, in very, very like Trumpy, truth social posting language, you know, with all the extraneous capitalizations and things that, you know, maybe dear Prime Minister Ashiba of Japan, for instance, here's the tariff you're going to pay, essentially is what he said.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And if you make certain changes and improve your relationship, we will consider changing this tariff rate.
--:-- Gavin Bade: But basically, just a reminder that if you don't do something different, this is the tariff rate you're going to face.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Over a dozen countries received letters yesterday.
--:-- Gavin Bade: They were all virtually identical, just with different numbers for each country.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But there was another key detail in these letters.
--:-- Gavin Bade: White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt highlighted it yesterday in a press conference.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The president will also sign an executive order today delaying the July 9th deadline to August 1st.
--:-- Gavin Bade: In his letters, Trump noted that he was pushing his tariff deadline by three weeks.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The administration, the president, and his trade team want to cut the best deals for the American people and the American worker, that's what they're focused on.
--:-- Gavin Bade: And in the effort of- I think what he's trying to do is up the pressure on them while also extending the deadline and giving himself some more breathing room.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So it's a bit of carrot and stick.
--:-- Gavin Bade: It's a reminder, hey, we're serious, but we're gonna move the deadline a little bit.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Yeah, we're gonna give you some extra time, but don't be fooled.
--:-- Gavin Bade: I'm really serious about these tariffs three weeks from now.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Today, Trump posted that more letters would be coming, quote, today, tomorrow, and for the next short period of time.
--:-- Gavin Bade: He also said that there'd be no extensions past August 1st.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And this afternoon, in a cabinet meeting, he disputed that he'd changed the tariff deadline at all.
--:-- Gavin Bade: It wasn't a change. It was August 1st. We don't change very much.
--:-- Annie Minoff: You know, every time we put out a statement, they say he made a change.
--:-- Gavin Bade: I didn't make a change. Clarification, maybe.
--:-- Annie Minoff: In that meeting, he also said he'd impose an additional 10% tariff on goods from BRICS nations.
--:-- Gavin Bade: That's Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And so as we look ahead to yet another trade deadline, what do you think the lessons are from these past 90 days?
--:-- Gavin Bade: It does appear to me that they are at least a little gun shy of reimposing all of these tariffs all at once, at least at this time.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I mean, Trump has said, you know, he wants to send these letters. He can just tell people what they're going to pay.
--:-- Gavin Bade: But, you know, he could have reimposed these tariffs on Wednesday for any nation that didn't come to him with a deal he wanted.
--:-- Annie Minoff: He kicked the can.
--:-- Gavin Bade: That, I think, is the action we should focus on here more than any of the rhetoric in the letters or anything like that.
--:-- Annie Minoff: He could have done it. He didn't do it.
--:-- Gavin Bade: There's got to be a reason for that.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And maybe it's because he wants to avert the market chaos that happened.
--:-- Gavin Bade: Now, maybe a month down the line, three weeks down the line, he lets all of that happen and go into effect.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But he certainly didn't do that this week.
--:-- Gavin Bade: That's all for today, Tuesday, July 8th.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Gavin Bade: Additional reporting in this episode by Brian Schwartz.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
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