Tariff Turmoil: Agreements with 195 Countries in 90 Days Is Impossible

Time magazine. There was this bewildering exchange:

Time: Your trade adviser, Peter Navarro, says 90 deals in 90 days is possible. We're now 13 days into the point from when you lifted the reciprocal, the discounted reciprocal tariffs. There's zero deals so far. Why is that?

Trump: No, there’s many deals.

Time: When are they going to be announced?

Trump: You have to understand, I'm dealing with all the companies [sic], very friendly countries. We're meeting with China. We're doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I've made all the deals.

Time: Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them?

Trump: I’ve made 200 deals.

Time: You’ve made 200 deals?

Trump: 100%.

A week ago in a Washington Post op-ed, Vice President JD Vance wrote:

"In the weeks since Liberation Day, the Trump administration has heard from 130 different trading partners seeking negotiations, with nearly 20 already having sent written proposals.”

Really? None accepted? Only the U.K. framework so far?

Trump has endlessly lied to hoodwink his MAGA cohort into believing that other countries pay the tariffs. His inner circle has had to parrot the lie, or in the case of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in mid-week before Congress, go to lengths to avoid contradicting the lie. Wisconsin Democratic Representative Mark Pocan asked him a simple question:

Pocan: Who pays tariffs?

Bessent: Sorry, well,…

Pocan: Mr. Secretary, Who pays tariffs?

Bessent: Well, Congressman, if the exporters dislike tariffs so much, why wouldn’t they if, I think what you’re trying to get me to say…

Pocan: Do you remember the question? I’m not sure you did. Who pays tariffs?

Bessent: That, the, it’s a very complicated question.

Pocan: People pay tariffs, right? I’m assuming.

Bessent: The history would show that it is a complicated mix of who pays the tariffs over various periods of time.

Perhaps he didn't realize that Trump had already blown cover. In telling America's little girls that they would have to settle for two dolls for Christmas instead of 30 under his austerity plan, he let slip that "maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally". Oops, that admitted that tariffs are tacked on at this end, not paid by exporting countries. The dolls incident filled the media. Even Karl Rove, once senior advisor and deputy chief of staff for George W. Bush, took Trump to task on Fox News saying:

"It sounds like Mr. Scrooge…The ordinary American is like, 'Wait a minute, I thought you were on my side. I didn’t think you were on the side of saying I need to do with less. You’ve got plenty of money. I’ve got to make mine stretch as far as I can.'”

Trump called him "a total loser".

Punchbowl News got wind of a shopping unit at Amazon planning to show the cost of the tariff alongside every item’s price at checkout. The White House blew a fuse on hearing of this, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt calling it “a hostile and political act”. It was in fact entirely justified, no different from showing sales taxes, excise taxes, etc. Trump called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who, subservient again to the regime, had his Amazon quash the plan instanter. MSNBC's Elise Jordan quipped, "For about thirty seconds it seemed like Amazon cared more about customers than the White House, but nope."

In a post at his Truth Social a week ago, with his usual strange notion of capitalization, the president decreed:

”I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”

Trump dictates tariffs under an “emergency” he has declared that trade imbalances constitute a national security threat; foreign films evidently pose a danger we hadn’t realized. It is a puzzle to figure out just what to tariff – the production budget? Every ticket at the box office?

Canada's newly-elected Prime Minister Mark Carney was sitting in the Oval Office this week when Mr. Trump became exasperated with reporters' nagging questions about when is he going to sign tariff deals, with a third of his 90 days gone. It was a huh? moment:

"We don’t have to sign deals. We could sign 25 deals right now, if we wanted. You keep writing about deals, deals, when are we going to sign? I wish they’d keep, you know, stop asking how many deals are you signing this week? Because one day we’ll come and we’ll give you a hundred deals, and they don’t have to sign."

Because he will adjust tariffs on trading partners if there hasn’t been an agreement, he said. His baffling ramble then had the U.S. as producer selling goods rather than buying from abroad. In the Time interview, he had said, “We are a department store, and we set the price.”With Carney sitting alongside, he voiced that peculiar analogy again:

“We will sign some deals, but much bigger than that is we’re going to put down the price that people will have to pay to shop in the United States. Think of us as a super luxury store, a store that has the goods.”