WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is looking for “agreements” with countries around the world, telling major business partners that it is open to negotiations before higher rates enter in force on August 1.
But what constitutes a trade agreement currently has become a complicated issue. For the president, a trade agreement seems to be just about anything he wants to be.
While traditional trade agreements reach hundreds of pages and take years to negotiate, Trump and their advisors have used the term to refer to much more limited arrangements. , which had only a few pages and included many promises that still need to be negotiated.
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The president also used the term “trade agreement” for last week. In a social truth publication, he said it would be “a major cooperation agreement between our two countries” and would reduce some Vietnamese products to 20%. But since then neither has publicly publicized any text or summary describing what was actually agreed.
The president also recently referred to in June as a “trade agreement”, although the pact consisted only in an agreement between the two governments to reverse tariffs and other retaliatory measures that had adopted in recent months. A commercial agreement usually implies changes in the rules of trade – but this truce only returned the relationship to the status quo.
At a White House cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump also used the term “agreement” to refer to unilateral arrangements that other countries have not even consented: the letters he has sent through social networks informing governments about new rates about their exports.
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In almost identical letters published in Truth Social on Monday, the president reported South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa and other countries about the rates that his products would face if they did not reach a commercial agreement first. To give your negotiators more time,
But on Tuesday he seemed to suggest that future opportunities for negotiation could be limited.
“The agreements are basically my agreements for them,” Trump said during the cabinet meeting, referring to the letters. He seemed to recognize that the mission his government had established this year – signing commercial agreements with dozens of countries in a matter of months – was unrealistic.
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“We made some agreements,” he said. “We can make a lot of agreements. But that consumes a lot of time. It makes things more complicated. And we can do it over the years as well.”
“A letter means an agreement,” added the president. “We have 200 countries. We can’t meet with 200 countries.”
The president has been using the term “agreement” vaguely for some time. In an interview with Time In April, he stated in a disconcerting manner to have made “200 agreements” with other countries. When asked, he explained: “Because the agreement is an agreement that I choose.”
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In his first term, Trump also had a preference to negotiate more limited trade agreements, such as Japan in 2019. But his government also made more comprehensive negotiations. He spent several years renegotiating the North America Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico and signed a trade agreement with China that addressed a number of issues, from intellectual property to agriculture.
United States, Canada and Mexico need to review their trade agreement next year. But other than that, the second Trump government has shown little interest or patience for comprehensive trade negotiations. Traditional free trade agreements have been difficult to negotiate and politically toxic. They also usually require Congress approval, something the government has avoided seeking, for the frustration of the Democrats.
But the main reason why the new government agreements are so limited is that US employees are looking for them in a very short time. Since Trump announced in April that he would give countries only three months to close agreements with the United States, many trade experts have considered the goal totally unrealistic.
Employees of the US and the Department of Commerce representative office have worked intensely by pressing countries to open their markets for agricultural products, airplanes, cars and other US goods. They have also asked other governments that cancel discriminatory taxes applied to US companies and collaborate to prevent Chinese products from entering the United States through their territories.
Scott Lincicome, Vice President of General Economics of the Cato Institute, said the president’s decision to postpone the rate of tariffs to August 1 “should not surprise.”
“Since April we have known that closing quickly, much less implementing, complex trade agreements with dozens of foreign governments was impossible, and that the president is deeply concerned about the market reaction to an extreme scenario of tariffs in the US,” he said.
“That said, the news is not exactly good: it means at least another month of uncertainty, a better scenario of historically high tariffs in the US and therefore significant contrary winds for the American economy in the fall,” he added.
It remains to be seen how wide will the agreement with Vietnam and other future agreements. The United States and India appear to be close to announcing some kind of initial agreement, which could be expanded in future negotiations. People familiar with conversations say that the European Union and the United States are also close to an agreement, which would be more a general outline of some pages than a detailed trade agreement.
This does not seem to be a problem for Trump, who was pleased to announce agreements with the UK and Vietnam even before they are finished.
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