The US president reveals his poker "tell" by showing he is open to delays to secure trade deals.

Donald Trump’s White House had grandly promised “90 deals in 90 days” after partially pausing the process of levying what the US president called “reciprocal” tariffs.

In reality, there won’t even be 9 deals done by the time we reach Trump’s first cut-off date on 9 July.

The revealing thing here, the poker “tell” if you like, is the extension of the deadline from Wednesday until 1 August, with a possibility of further extensions - or delays - to come.

  • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    61·
    10 hours ago

    At this point the Trump admin is just trying to find the best way to back down without looking weak. They don’t really have a plan to do so, they’re just hoping some other shit storm takes center stage.

    In the case of Australia, our government decided that it’s not worth trying to secure a deal for a number of reasons:

    • the whole world is in the same situation, and our tariffs are less than others, so others can do the heavy lifting
    • we’re not really adversely effected. We don’t sell heaps of things to the US and they need to keep buying the stuff that we do sell.
    • you can’t really make a deal with someone who will discard the deal as soon as it becomes beneficial to do so.
    • whatever concessions we might offer are better used in other negotiations.
    • China is presently wooing us and we’re more desirable since we’ve curtailed our long standing romance with the US.

    The rubric is going to be similar for other countries.

    If nobody bends over for Trump he will end up fucking himself.

      • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        32·
        4 hours ago

        Yeah but, a few or even a bunch of other countries “doing deals” won’t really change the calculus for us. It would really take most countries really grovelling to change the dynamic.

        Let’s not forget, the status quo pre-Trump was the best everyone could achieve for everyone involved.

        Everyone hates capitalism and that’s fine, there are many worthy criticisms but one benefit is it’s ability to find the most profitable balance (for those with the capital). Arbitrary rules (tariffs) are always going to be a net loss.

        What I mean is, there’s not much incentive for anyone to make a deal because the situation will always be worse for them than it was pre-Trump.