President Trump suggested on Friday that the United States was close to reaching trade deals with multiple countries but held out the prospect of reimposing high tariffs on some trading partners, introducing fresh uncertainty into his trade talks.
Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, had suggested earlier in the day that the administration might give countries more time to negotiate beyond a quickly approaching deadline for tariffs to snap back into effect on July 8. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Bessent said that negotiations with trading partners could be “wrapped up by Labor Day,” adding that “nothing gets done in Washington well in advance.”
But in his remarks, the president seemed inclined to keep everyone guessing. Asked whether he would reimpose tariffs on July 8, he responded, “We can do whatever we want.”
“We could extend it. We could make it shorter,” Mr. Trump said. “I’d like to make it shorter. I’d like to just send letters out to everybody, ‘Congratulations, you’re paying 25 percent.’”
Mr. Trump also said that the United States was in the “process” of making deals with some countries, but that other countries would receive a letter stating the tariffs their exports now face.
“We’re just going to tell them what they have to pay,” he said.
Foreign governments have been working to strike trade deals to avoid steep global tariffs, which Mr. Trump first announced in April, but then paused for 90 days to allow for negotiations.
U.S. officials have said they are holding trade talks with roughly 18 trading partners, including the European Union, Japan, Vietnam, India and Malaysia, and they appear to be nearing preliminary deals with several of those governments.
Mr. Trump claimed on Friday that he had made trade deals with “four or five different countries,” despite little evidence to support that. The United States announced a limited framework deal with the United Kingdom in May and has been getting close to preliminary deals with other countries like Vietnam and India, but those deals have not yet been announced.
The president has also been calling the agreement U.S. officials struck with their Chinese counterparts in London this month a “deal.” But that agreement only walks back some punitive measures both sides took against each other, and does nothing to advance any cooperation on trade.
In an interview on Friday morning, Mr. Bessent had suggested that negotiations with trading partners could be extended into September.
“With all things, they get done at the end,” Mr. Bessent said on the Fox Business Network, adding that progress was being made on about a dozen trade deals beyond China and Britain. “I think we can have trade wrapped up by Labor Day.”
Other administration officials have recently sought to play down the significance of the quickly approaching deadline. Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, said on Thursday that the July deadline was “not critical.”
Mr. Bessent’s comments buoyed markets Friday, with the S&P 500 index rising more than 0.6 percent by late morning. If the benchmark closes at its current level, it will be back in record territory. The market’s last high was in February, before Mr. Trump’s trade war touched off a downward spiral.
The administration’s statements — suggesting that the coming deadline could be flexible, but also that tariffs could be imminent — underscore the uncertainty that foreign governments have been facing as they try to negotiate with the United States.
Foreign ministers have been carrying out talks with Mr. Bessent, as well as Jamieson Greer, the United States Trade Representative, and Howard Lutnick, the Commerce secretary. But they have been told that decisions on tariffs and trade deals are ultimately up to the famously unpredictable president.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump said he had “great deals” coming, including a “very big” one with India that would “open up” its markets.
“We’re not going to make deals with everybody,” the president said. “Some, we’re just going to send them a letter and say, ‘Thank you very much, you’re going to pay 25, 35, 45 percent,’ that’s the easy way to do it.”
Trade experts have said that the prospect of negotiating substantive trade deals with more than a dozen countries in a matter of months is wildly unrealistic. Past administrations have typically carried out talks with only a handful of countries at a time. Those negotiations typically lasted many months or even years, and produced comprehensive trade deals that could be hundreds or thousands of pages long.
The Trump team, in contrast, has been trying to rewrite the terms of trade with all of America’s major trading partners in just a few months. Some foreign governments have been told that Trump officials did not have time to meet with them in person, and that they should submit their trade offers in writing instead.
The deals the administration is negotiating appear to reflect that hasty timeline. A framework agreement that the United States announced with Britain in May was just a few pages long. Rather than reflecting agreements that had already been reached, the deal said that the countries planned to continue working together and negotiating.
Other deals that the Trump administration is working toward may be also be vague and limited, people familiar with the negotiations say.
Tim Brightbill, an attorney at Wiley Rein, said that the United States trade representative had been hard at work on “a number of these framework agreements.”
He said they were likely to be similar to the agreement announced with Britain in terms of scale and topics. He added that some trading partners, like Vietnam, appeared more “forward leaning,” while others like Europe and South Korea had been negotiating more slowly.
European officials have ramped up their engagement recently, saying they would like to reach a negotiated “solution” before July 9.
But the two sides have remained sharply divided on key issues. American policymakers have been pushing the European Union to change its approach to regulating digital services companies as part of the deal.
European Union officials have been adamant that they will not change their laws or allow any encroachment upon their sovereign ability to make policy decisions.
“This is for us absolutely untouchable,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said at a recent news conference. “Of course, we discuss tariff lines, we discuss non-tariff barriers, like standards and norms, for example. We discuss strategic purchases.”
European officials have said they are willing to work toward buying more American liquefied natural gas and to invest in American technologies and markets. They have also said they could potentially chip away at standards on cars, corporate sustainability and due diligence — which the bloc is working to streamline anyway as part of a push to reinvigorate its economy.
In return, they have been talking to American officials about importing more apples and pears and sheep and goat meat, since those products currently face import barriers.
Talks with other countries have become bogged down over historically difficult issues, including Mr. Trump’s plans to impose more tariffs on exports of electronics, pharmaceuticals and other critical products from those countries. Negotiations with Japan and South Korea, for example, both traditionally close allies, have been delayed by domestic elections in those countries, as well as tensions over Mr. Trump’s steep tariffs on cars and steel.
Many of Mr. Trump’s tariffs have also been thrown into question through recent legal cases. The U.S. Court of International Trade said in May that the president’s “reciprocal” tariffs were unlawful.
For now, the tariffs legally stand while the government appeals the ruling, and lawyers for the administration say they will take the case to the Supreme Court if necessary. But a loss could force the president to dramatically alter his tariff plans.
Still, Trump officials maintain that the president’s strategy of threatening stiff tariffs has worked to bring other governments to the negotiating table.
Mr. Bessent said Friday that a lot of countries were feeling pressure, and he reiterated that Mr. Trump was willing to return to the “Liberation Day” tariff rates if counterparts do not come forward with strong offers. He added that Mr. Lutnick is getting closer on about 10 other agreements and that the United States has 18 important trading partners that are considered to be top priorities.
Despite the optimistic tone, Mr. Bessent has been saying for weeks that trade deals were imminent. In May, he suggested that “more and more” would be announced ahead of the initial 90-day deadline. The Treasury secretary has been particularly frustrated by the pace of talks with the European Union, which he said this month was “intractable” in negotiations.
Tony Romm and Alan Rappeport contributed reporting.
Ana Swanson covers trade and international economics for The Times and is based in Washington. She has been a journalist for more than a decade.
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
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