Trump announced the framework agreement on Truth Social on July 2, just days before the White House’s self-imposed July 8 deadline for trade negotiations. The deal was just the second the administration has reached to avoid its threatened “reciprocal” tariffs, after Trump suggested in an April interview that he’d made 200 deals. According to Trump’s July 2 post, exports from Vietnam will face a 20 percent tariff — down from the 46 percent that was paused in April — or a 40 percent tariff if they originated in a different country. In exchange, Vietnam “will ‘OPEN THEIR MARKET TO THE UNITED STATES,’ meaning that, we will be able to sell our product into Vietnam at ZERO Tariff,” the president wrote.
That sent shock waves through Vietnam because their negotiators had not, in fact, agreed to the 20 percent rate; they believed the tariff rate would be around 11 percent, according to the four people. Trump disregarded that figure in his phone call with Vietnamese General Secretary Lâm — who had not been part of the initial tariff negotiations — and instead declared the U.S. would impose a tariff nearly twice as high.
Some on the U.S. side were surprised, too, including outside groups who’d been tracking the talks, according to one Washington-based lobbyist who works with Vietnam and other Asian governments.
“Trump sandbagged everybody,” said the lobbyist. They described the Vietnamese government’s reaction as “surprise, as well as disappointment and anger.”
In 2018, South Korea handed President Donald Trump the first trade victory of his administration. Under the agreement, new South Korean steel export restrictions were put in place and more U.S. automakers could export their cars to South Korea.
The president hailed it as “a historic milestone,” a “great deal for American and Korean workers” and a “fair and reciprocal” deal. That was probably overselling what amounted to a modest rewrite of a pre-existing trade agreement, but South Korea was happy to play along if it meant buying peace and quiet.
When Trump took office in January, South Korea seemed well-positioned to weather the looming tariffs the president was eager to implement. But it was not to be. Earlier this week, Trump announced he would impose a 25% tariff on South Korean exports starting Aug. 1, unless its government agreed to even more concessions.
The new threat sent a message that resonated far beyond Seoul: Trump can’t be trusted.
Foreign leaders have already noticed that nobody is safe from the mercurial temperament of the U.S. president and his endless appetite for tariffs and and a light-switch approach to flipping them on and off. So far in his second term, Trump has broken more trade deals than forged new ones, and the goalposts are constantly moving. The president inked a sweeping deal with Canada and Mexico in his first term, then turned around and launched another trade war earlier this year.
The behavior might earn the “dealmaker-in-chief” a new nickname: the “dealbreaker-in-chief.”
Since March, the son of the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has been roaming the halls of the White House. Eduardo Bolsonaro, 41, is a sitting Brazilian congressman, but his latest job has been to convince U.S. officials that a dangerous Brazilian Supreme Court justice wants to throw him and his father into prison, simply for fighting against what they claim was a stolen election.
And in multiple visits to Washington over the past several months, he has found a sympathetic audience. “This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent — Something I know much about!” President Trump posted online Monday. “It happened to me, times 10.”
Eduardo Bolsonaro said he had been pushing senior White House officials to place sanctions on the Brazilian judge overseeing his father’s prosecution. Then, on Wednesday, Mr. Trump opted for something far more damaging: a 50 percent tariff on all Brazilian imports starting Aug. 1, retaliation for what he called a “witch hunt” against Jair Bolsonaro.
The shift from imposing sanctions on a single judge to threatening an entire nation of 200 million with harsh tariffs was Mr. Trump’s decision alone, according to two people familiar with the meeting at which the president discussed his decision and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation.
The move showed Mr. Trump’s new willingness to use tariffs to settle political scores, regardless of questions of legality, because of their sheer power to cause economic destruction and impose intense political pressure.
It’s all pointless except as an exercise to stroke his own ego in the moment and alienate most of the planet against the United States — because he can. He’s mad that he isn’t universally loved so he’s going to get even. And he is apparently very sure that he will get away with all of it. After all, he’s 79 years old and he’s always gotten away with everything. He believes he is omnipotent,
