President Donald Trump and his team want to reach trade deals with 90 countries in as many days — and experts say there’s “no way” he can achieve that mark.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox Business the Trump administration will “run 90 deals in 90 days.” His proclamation comes after Trump issued blanket tariffs of at least 10 percent on nearly every country — then placed a 90-day pause on most of the tariffs Wednesday.
Navarro added Trump will be “the boss” and “chief negotiator” of these supposed deals: “Nothing is done without him looking very carefully at it.”
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer similarly said that a team of 200 people are “working around the clock” to get deals “to a point where the president can close” them.
But economists say it’s not going to happen with the Senate having only confirmed one other senior Treasury Department official and the administration already being stretched thin.
“Teeing up these decisions is going to take some serious negotiations,” Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. Trade Representative chief negotiator, told Reuters. “There’s no way during this timeframe we’re doing a comprehensive agreement with any of these countries.”
Cutler called the goal a “huge task.”
“The onus is going to be on them to show that they can quickly conclude agreements with countries, and instill some confidence in the market and with other trading partners that there is an off-ramp here,” she added.
The goal is even more unrealistic given that Trump’s top advisers each have their own views on trade policy, leaving negotiators on the other side uncertain, an unnamed diplomatic source told Reuters.
“It’s not like there’s a sheet of paper with firm talking points that is changing hands,” the diplomatic source said. “It’s a process. And I’d say use the term ‘talks’, not ‘negotiations.'”
Trump’s blanket 90-day pause, which he attributed to people “getting yippy” and “a little bit afraid,” came after a week of significant market lows.
Two weeks ago, the stock market saw its worst week since 2020. It also marked only the fourth time in history that the Dow Jones lost 2,000 points in a single day. The past week also saw volatile swings after false reports of a 90-day pause on Monday, with the market gaining and then losing $2.4 trillion in a matter of minutes.
Then, when Trump instituted the 90-day pause two days later, the Dow soared 2,962 points, while the NASDAQ surged 1,857 points, marking the largest single-day point gains for both indices.
At close on Thursday, the Dow dropped 1,014 points, or 2.5 percent, and the NASDAQ slid 737 points, or 4.3 percent. But the market closed for the week on Friday with major indices higher than where they began on Monday.
