By Gavin Bade

WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration has embarked on a high-speed effort to negotiate ad hoc deals with more than 70 countries hoping to escape higher tariffs, with any agreements likely to fall short of the kind of fully-fledged trade pacts that traditionally shape global trade.

People with knowledge of the discussions say that many of the offers President Trump is touting are preliminary calls or offers from other nations to negotiate, not fleshed-out economic proposals. While the administration has issued broad requirements for the countries coming to the table -- such as reducing their tariffs and buying more American goods -- the White House was still devising its negotiation strategy Thursday, as the countdown to the July 8 deadline began.

Traditional free-trade agreements typically take several years to negotiate. Narrower deals covering specific industries that Trump reached with nations such as China, Japan and Korea in his first term took several months. The White House now needs to speed-run negotiations much faster and with dozens of nations at the same time -- something that is worrying lawmakers on Capitol Hill who are eager to see deals reached that can avoid the tariff-induced stock selloff of the past week.

The deals aren't likely to be fully developed free-trade agreements, which typically need to be passed by Congress. Instead, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.), Trump's first-term ambassador to Japan, said the administration might settle for written commitments from foreign governments to make certain economic reforms, akin to a term sheet that precedes an investment or business deal. That perspective was backed up by a foreign-government official in contact with the U.S.

After those preliminary deals are reached, administration officials can work out which, if any, of the agreements they will bring before Congress.

"In deal parlance, once you've got a letter of intent, then you know you're gonna enter into an agreement," Hagerty said. "I wouldn't expect a final deal in 90 days but I would expect the parameters of each deal could be laid out, negotiated, and agreed to."

The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.

Administration officials have said that agreements, in some form, are coming. National Economic Council Chair Kevin Hassett said Thursday that 15 nations had made offers to the U.S., though he didn't provide details. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also tried to reassure lawmakers this week that he and his staff were working around the clock to hash out tariff deals. He offered general points on what countries should offer the U.S., such as focusing on lowering the trade deficit.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles directed economic officials to meet Thursday "to discuss what their views are about how this should go, " Hassett said.

And Trump was adamant he would get deals done within his time frame. "I could make every deal in one day if I wanted to," he said during a cabinet meeting Thursday. "I could do this all in one day."

Greer told lawmakers this week that he and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had held several conversations with Japanese negotiators. He said they would aim to secure more access to the Japanese market for U.S. goods, commitments to buy U.S. commodities such as liquefied natural gas and alignment on screening investments that private companies make in adversarial nations such as China.

The content of discussions with other nations, however, remains unclear. Amid the confusion, some countries are rushing to other so-called Trump whisperers, such as Hagerty, for guidance. The Tennessee senator said he had communicated with several governments in his role as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about what they should offer U.S. negotiators.

One thing seems nearly certain: The 10% baseline tariff will stay in place. It would take "some kind of extraordinary deal to go below" that 10% rate, Hassett said Thursday.

European Union Trade Commissioner Maroš efčovič said this week that the bloc was optimistic that it could address U.S. concerns about its trade deficit with the EU and suggested the Europeans could buy more liquefied natural gas and other American products such as soybeans. But he also expressed skepticism that doing so would be enough to appease the Trump administration.

"If we know that this is the issue, I think then we can sort it out very quickly," efčovič said of the trade deficit. Speaking two days before Trump announced his tariff pause, efčovič said he felt the U.S. tariffs had more to do with a push to transform the global trading system and that the duties were viewed as a way to achieve the administration's political goals.

The EU also said this week that it had offered to cut automotive and other industrial tariffs to zero if the U.S. did the same.

The EU is unlikely to change the value-added tax, which the Trump administration views as an unfair trade practice because it is refunded to companies exporting from VAT nations. The tax provides an important source of revenue for European governments, and EU officials and many economists say it is nondiscriminatory. Tech regulations that the U.S. has complained about aren't connected to trade "and we will not be conflating the two in our negotiations," an EU spokesman said this week. The bloc has also said it wouldn't compromise on its food health-and-safety standards in talks with the U.S.

Peter Navarro, the administration adviser who helped design the much-maligned formula for Trump's reciprocal levies, said on CNN that the deals would come.

"We do stuff in Trump time, which is to say as quickly as possible," Navarro said. "Let's see what happens."

Write to Gavin Bade at gavin.bade@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 10, 2025 21:00 ET (01:00 GMT)

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