By Joe Light

President Donald Trump's lightning-fast timeline for striking trade deals is likely to produce some interim successes soon, but analysts and former negotiators don't see a quick resolution with the most important U.S. trading partners.

Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday that he expected a trade deal with China to be hashed out over "three or four weeks." That came on the heels of White House trade advisor Peter Navarro telling NBC News the administration sought to have "90 deals in 90 days possibly pending here" by the time Trump's pause on so-called reciprocal tariffs ends in July.

The White House's timeline doesn't have historical precedent. Trade negotiations are often a long slog, even if both countries have already identified the issues they want to address.

An analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics of past free trade agreements found negotiations took 18 months on average. The actual implementation of the agreements typically took nearly four years.

"Trade negotiations generally are pretty complicated and time intensive, " said Greta Peisch, a partner at Wiley Rein and a former general counsel for the Office of the United States Trade Representative during President Joe Biden's administration. "It's hard to imagine addressing the multitude of issues that seem to be underlying their concerns" in that time frame.

It is possible for the White House to strike interim agreements with countries over the next few months that spell out the negotiations' timeline and scope, Peisch said. Importantly for markets, those kinds of agreements in the past have been accompanied by pauses or reductions in levies. That could make the tariff pause indefinite.

High on the list for potential interim deals are countries in the Indo-Pacific region, such as Japan, Australia, and Vietnam, said Raymond James policy analyst Ed Mills in a research note on Thursday. Talks with the European Union could take longer "given the administration's demonstrated animosity towards the bloc."

Talks with China could be the most drawn out, Mills wrote. The country publicly criticized Vice President JD Vance for referring to "Chinese peasants" in an interview.

Part of the problem with the administration's negotiating timeline is logistics. Seventy-five countries have reached out seeking negotiations, with 15 of them offering deals that are under consideration, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier this week. On Thursday, Trump said those countries included China.

Trump designated Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to lead negotiations with Japan and other countries. Their ability to close deals quickly will depend on whether they or Trump are willing to empower other U.S. officials to negotiate. Trump himself could be a bottleneck, given that Navarro said he wants to be personally involved in signing off on any agreements.

Earlier this month, Trump put a 90-day "pause" on many tariffs with the exception of those against China, which is still subject to 145% levies.

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

A good signal on where negotiations are headed could come as soon as next week, when Bessent and dozens of finance ministers will meet at the International Monetary Fund-World Bank meetings in Washington, said Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center.

"The big question is whether Bessent has meetings with his counterparts from China and elsewhere," Lipsky said. "I wouldn't expect tariffs to drop down to where they were, but we'll be looking for signs of an intermediate ceasefire."

Even if the U.S. does reach near-term agreements, there's nothing stopping tariffs from changing again during talks. In 2019, Trump reimposed tariffs on China, tweeting that the country "broke the deal" that had led to an earlier de-escalation of that trade spat. Interim deals won't spell an end to uncertainty.

Write to Joe Light at joe.light@barrons.com

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April 19, 2025 03:30 ET (07:30 GMT)

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