Why Trump Pushed His Tariff Deadline

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You just don't really know what's coming next with this administration, but we're rolling with the punches, so to speak.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 After the announcement, the market tanked. And a week later, Trump paused the tariffs.

Speaker 1 The goal of that 90-day pause was to cut as many deals with U.S. trading partners as the administration could.
Here's Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro.

Speaker 4 We've got 90 deals in 90 days possibly pending here.

Speaker 1 90 deals in 90 days.

Speaker 4 And we're going to get this done for the American people.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 A lot of balls in the air when it came to these different negotiations.

Speaker 1 That 90-day tariff pause was due to expire tomorrow. But those 90 deals have proven elusive.

Speaker 1 Instead, the past three months have been marked by stalled negotiations and just a handful of trade agreements.

Speaker 1 And yesterday, that 90-day deadline was pushed.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So up the pressure, up the ante, and maybe we revisit this in a couple weeks.

Speaker 1 Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Menoff.
It's Tuesday, July 8th.

Speaker 1 Coming up on the show, why 90 deals in 90 Days Didn't Happen.

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Speaker 1 How unusual and ambitious was this kind of 90-day sprint to to rework the U.S.'s trade relationships.

Speaker 2 I would say it was a proposal of unprecedented ambition from the U.S. government.
You know, trade deals usually take years, months, if not years, to fully negotiate.

Speaker 2 And, you know, typical trade deals will cover a lot of different subjects, right?

Speaker 2 You know, every everything from market access for agricultural products to industrial tariffs, you know, sometimes subsidies, sometimes labor practices.

Speaker 2 Those very full, full-fat trade deals, as you might call them,

Speaker 2 take years to negotiate. 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.

Speaker 2 has with other economies and try to use the speed and pressure of these trade negotiations to kind of knock them down.

Speaker 1 Yeah, take some wins and move on to the next one.

Speaker 2 Indeed, that's what they wanted to do, do things in Trump time, as they like to say.

Speaker 1 And about a month into Trump's pause, that approach seemed to to be bearing some fruit.

Speaker 7 President Trump announcing that the U.S. will strike a trade deal with the UK and moments ago.

Speaker 1 In May, the administration came to an agreement with the United Kingdom. U.S.
farmers got increased access to the UK market, and the UK got a break on steel and auto tariffs.

Speaker 8 The 27.5% tariff announced for UK cars is reduced to 10%.

Speaker 2 At the time, it looked like, oh, they've got a deal. It's still, you know, a little bit before the deadline, and maybe they're going to be able to pull this off.
We've got some momentum.

Speaker 2 We've got countries that are coming to talk to us. And so they were pretty optimistic at that point.

Speaker 1 It was a first notch in the trade team's belt.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 The United States and China agreeing on a framework that could lead to a trade deal.

Speaker 2 The U.S. and China agree to reduce tariffs for the next 90 days.

Speaker 5 And the relationship relationship between the two nations is quote, excellent.

Speaker 1 But that's where the success has stopped.

Speaker 1 Beyond the UK and China, Gavin says trade talks with other countries have stalled.

Speaker 2 What they've found out is other countries have trade protections for a reason, just as we do, and you can't simply forget that they have domestic politics, right?

Speaker 2 I think a good example is the Japanese example here.

Speaker 1 Japan, an early target for the U.S. trade team.
Did people think that this was going to be a hard deal to cut?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Remember, this is perhaps the U.S.'s closest ally in Asia and one of its closest allies around the world. The negotiating teams get along pretty well.

Speaker 2 And the Japanese trade negotiator, he had been to Washington, D.C. no fewer than seven times.
They were doing everything right in order to get a deal with the United States, and the U.S.

Speaker 2 really wanted one as well. But a lot of these, you know, once you started to get into the minutia of this deal, it got a lot more difficult.

Speaker 1 As the two sides talked, one major sticking point was tariffs on specific industries.

Speaker 2 And particularly with Japan, the automotive industry, the car tariffs are huge.

Speaker 1 In March, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on foreign cars, including those from Japan. And that's a lot of cars.
The U.S. imports $40 billion worth of passenger vehicles from Japan every year.

Speaker 1 This is also coming at an especially tricky time for Japan, which has a big election coming up.

Speaker 2 Japan's upper house of parliament has an election on July 20th. The prime minister's government is already a minority government.
They're under a lot of pressure.

Speaker 2 And so they can't come back and say, hey, we secured a deal with the United States that left in place 25% auto tariffs.

Speaker 2 I mean, privately, we've heard that Japanese officials saying, you know, that would put our entire government at risk.

Speaker 2 It's a very, very touchy subject for good reason in Japan because the automotive sector is so integral to their economy.

Speaker 1 These tariffs on cars have remained a roadblock in the negotiations.

Speaker 1 Japan's prime minister said in June that the country would do everything it could to protect its automobile industry.

Speaker 1 Then last week, Trump appeared to cut off talks with Tokyo. In an interview on Fox News, he suggested he might send the country a letter.

Speaker 3 I'm going to send letters. That's the end of the trade deal.
I could send one to Japan.

Speaker 3 Dear Mr. Japan, here's the story.
You're going to pay a 25% tariff on your cars, you know?

Speaker 2 His kind of reaction was just to say, hey, we're going to just send you a letter. We're just going to slap these tariffs on you, and that'll be what you pay.

Speaker 2 And, you know, if you're ready to come to the table and do what we want, then fine. But, you know, Trump is totally fine with applying these tariffs back on again.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 A lot of nations have these touch points, these impasse, where it's going to be very difficult to do a deal, especially in short order.

Speaker 1 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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Speaker 1 Last week, the Trump administration seemed to have a breakthrough. Trump announced a deal with a key trading partner, Vietnam.
And on its face, the term sounded pretty favorable to the U.S.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 goods that are going into Vietnam. And in return, what Vietnam would get was 20% tariffs for its products coming into the U.S.

Speaker 2 But they said if there are trans-shipped products that are coming through Vietnam, they will be tariffed at a higher rate. They will be tariffed at 40% instead of 20%.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 This practice, trans-shipment, has been a major issue for the Trump administration.

Speaker 1 That's especially true in Southeast Asia, where China has relied on small neighboring countries to get around American trade barriers for years.

Speaker 1 So this deal that Trump announced seemed like a big win for the president and his trade team. But Gavin says, there's just one problem.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And so really, beyond Trump's truth social posts, there is no evidence that there is any deal of any kind on this.

Speaker 2 And as a matter of fact, we reported that there are some details that are still being worked out here. So this is falls far, far short of a signed, sealed, delivered trade deal with Vietnam.

Speaker 2 The teams are still hashing out some details here.

Speaker 1 The Vietnamese embassy in Washington didn't respond to requests for comment.

Speaker 1 So, for those keeping score at home, as of earlier this week, how many of those 90 deals in 90 days did we have?

Speaker 2 I think you could say at most three. You have the UK 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.

Speaker 2 You had this tariff truce with China, which similarly no one's seen any documentation of.

Speaker 2 The White House has called it confidential, but they did did agree to lower tariffs on china so there was movement there but no one's seen any of those details and then this sort of like phantom trade deal with vietnam for which we have no documentation whatsoever so i think if you're being generous you could say three deals

Speaker 1 by monday morning of this week the july 9th deadline was fast approaching and no more deals were materializing So Trump amped up the pressure on some of the U.S.'s trading partners.

Speaker 1 That pressure took the form of letters, which Trump posted publicly on his social media.

Speaker 2 He starts issuing these letters to other nations outlining what they would pay in tariffs.

Speaker 2 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 Ishiba of Japan, for instance, Here's the tariff you're going to pay, essentially is what he said.

Speaker 2 And if you make certain changes and improve your relationship, we will consider changing this tariff rate.

Speaker 2 But basically, just a reminder that if you don't do something different, this is the tariff rate you're going to face.

Speaker 1 Over a dozen countries received letters yesterday. They were all virtually identical, just with different numbers for each country.
But there was another key detail in these letters.

Speaker 1 White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt highlighted it yesterday in a press conference.

Speaker 9 The president will also sign an executive order today delaying the July 9th deadline to August 1st.

Speaker 1 In his letters, Trump noted that he was pushing his tariff deadline by three weeks.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 2 And in the effort, 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.

Speaker 1 So it's a bit of carrot and stick. It's a reminder, hey, we're serious, but we're going to move the deadline a little bit.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we're going to give you some extra time.

Speaker 2 But don't be fooled. I'm really serious about these tariffs three weeks from now.

Speaker 1 Today, Trump posted that more letters would be coming, quote, today, tomorrow, and for the next short period of time. He also said that there'd be no extensions past August 1st.

Speaker 1 And this afternoon, in a cabinet meeting, he disputed that he'd changed the tariff deadline at all.

Speaker 10 It wasn't a change. It was August 1st.
We don't change very much. You know, every time we put out a statement, they say, he made a change.
I didn't make a change. Clarification, maybe.

Speaker 1 In that meeting, he also said he'd impose an additional 10% tariff on goods from BRICS nations. That's Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

Speaker 1 And so, as we look ahead to yet another trade deadline, what do you think the lessons are from these past 90 days?

Speaker 2 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. I mean, Trump has said, you know, he wants to send these letters.

Speaker 2 He can just tell people what they're going to pay. But, you know, he could have reimposed these tariffs on Wednesday for any nation that didn't come to him with the deal he wanted.
He kicked the can.

Speaker 2 That, I think, is the action we should focus on here more than any of the rhetoric in the letters or anything like that.

Speaker 2 He could have done it. He didn't do it.
There's got to be a reason for that. And maybe it's because he wants to avert the market chaos that happened.
Now,

Speaker 2 maybe a month down the line, three weeks down the line, he lets all of that happen and go into effect.

Speaker 2 But he certainly didn't do that this week.

Speaker 1 That's all for today, Tuesday, July 8th. The journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal.
Additional recording in this episode by Brian Schwartz.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.