With the traditional milestone of the first 100 days of his presidency approaching, President Donald Trump is declaring a much bigger number is coming from his take-no-prisoners approach to U.S. trade.
In an interview with Time magazine published Friday, he stated that as many as 200 deals are either finished or in the works to reset the country’s trade relationships with countries and companies around the world.
And even in the face of skeptical questioning, he’s not backing down a bit.
The interview was conducted Tuesday at the White House by Time senior political correspondent Eric Cortellessa and the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Sam Jacobs.
The questions about Trump’s tariff policy arose early in the clearly confrontational conversation. The journalists noted pointedly that “13 days” had passed since trade adviser projected the possibility of “90 deals” during the 90 days Trump had paused his tariffs on the countries of the world besides China.
“There’s zero deals so far. Why is that?” the interviewers asked (the transcript did not identify which Time staffer asked specific questions, though it was evident from the context in some cases).
The wording of the question is clearly hostile, and Trump responded first by objecting to the premise, then going on with an announcement that might have come as a surprise.
“No, there’s many deals,” he said.
“You have to understand, I’m dealing with all the companies, very friendly countries. We’re meeting with China. We’re doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I’ve made all the deals.”
And it’s not just 90, according to Trump.
“I’ve made 200 deals,” he said.
While Time noted that no deals had been announced, Trump said they would be coming in “three to four weeks.”
That would be an avalanche of changes in U.S. trade with the globe, and Trump predicted the deals would change the rules of the game, for the benefit of the U.S.
Comparing the country to a “department store,” where the “departments” are, presumably, the markets countries and companies around the world are seeking for their goods, Trump said negotiations with other entities would depend on specific elements.
“Do they charge us tariffs? How much are they charging us? How much have they been charging us? Many, many different factors, right,” he said. “How are we being treated by that country? And then I will set a tariff. Are we paying for their military? You know, as an example, we have Korea. We pay billions of dollars for the military. Japan, billions for those and others.”
And while he acknowledged that some of the deals will likely need some fine-tuning as they take effect, he also made clear to the Time interviewers — and the global audience of politicians and business leaders he had to know would be reading — that he saw the U.S. as the one in position to call the shots.
“We’re a department store, a giant department store, the biggest department store in history,” he said.”Everybody wants to come in and take from us. They’re going to come in and they’re going to pay a price for taking our treasure, for taking our jobs, for doing all of these things.
“But what I’m doing with the tariffs is people are coming in, and they’re building at levels you’ve never seen before. We have $7 trillion of new plants, factories and other things, investment coming into the United States. And if you look back at past presidents, nobody was anywhere near that.
“And this is in three months.”
Do you trust Trump to make good deals for the U.S.?
It’s been an action-packed three months for Trump on many fronts: His remaking of the the U.S. military, American support for Israel in its war on the Hamas terrorist group (though Israel was not exempt from Trump’s tariff strategy), attempts to bring some kind of peace in Russia’s war against Ukraine, and, when it comes to Iran’s nuclear aspirations, dealing with the global terror sponsors in Tehran.
But if Trump’s prediction about the deals comes to pass, the next “three to four weeks” could be key to the next three to four years of his presidency.
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