Trump Claims 200 Deals on Tariffs. His Cabinet Members Can’t

Peter Wade

Sun, April 27, 2025 at 10:42 AM PDT·5 min read

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President Trump bragged that he had made “200 deals” on trade and tariffs in a recent interview, but when pressed for details, two members of his cabinet could not name a single country that has agreed to one of Trump’s alleged deals.

Two weeks after he announced a 90-day pause on his punishing import tariffs, Trump claimed he has made many deals while refusing to say which countries agreed to those deals. The pause, he said, was to allow time for negotiations with other countries with the exception of China, which was exempted from the pause.

“I’ve made 200 deals,” Trump told Time magazine in an interview published Friday, adding, “100 percent.”

If that were true and every deal is with a different nation, it would mean Trump has already finalized deals with nearly every country in the world.

When asked to say which countries agreed to these supposed deals, Trump said, “Because the deal is a deal that I choose,” before going on a rant about how the U.S. is “a department store.”

“And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay,” the president said.

CNN’s Dana Bash confronted Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins during Sunday’s State of the Union, asking her to name one of the deals the administration has reached.

“The president told Time magazine, quote, ‘I have made 200 deals,” Bash said. “He didn’t give us any details about what those could be, what countries he’s talking about. Has he actually inked any trade deals, and with whom?”

“On the deals, we have 100 countries that are knocking on the door,” Rollins said. “I believe — I’m not in the room, I’m not negotiating the trade deals. But my understanding is, we should have several this week that are coming forward that are very, very close. China is a very important one. Every day, we are in conversation with China, along with those other 99, 100 countries that have come to the table.”

Of course, having some deals that are “very, very close” is not the same thing as having made “200 deals,” as Trump has explicitly claimed.

Rising trade tensions between the U.S. and China has already led to an increase in canceled shipments between Asia and North America after Trump jacked up tariffs on Chinese imports to 145 percent. China, meanwhile, has implemented retaliatory tariffs in addition to economic restrictions of exports of rare earth mineral to the United States and restrictions on 18 major U.S. manufacturers and defense companies.

While Trump and his administration have claimed they are in ongoing negotiations with China, Chinese officials have said that those talks have not happened. The Chinese ministry of commerce said that the administration’s claims they are in daily contact “are groundless and have no factual basis.”

“China and the United States have not held consultations or negotiations on the tariff issue, let alone reached an agreement,” the ministry said Thursday.

When confronted with that statement, Trump insisted a journalist had his “reporting wrong.”

Another Trump cabinet member, Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent, tried to justify Trump’s claim of “200 deals” by saying he actually meant “sub deals.”

“Let’s talk about the Time interview with President Trump,” host Martha Raddatz asked Bessent Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “He said he has made 200 deals on tariffs. Two hundred deals? Who has he made deals with? Is there actually any deal at this point?”

“I believe that he is referring to sub deals within the negotiations we’re doing,” Bessent said.

“But those aren’t actual deals?” Raddatz said.

“Martha, if there are 180 countries, there are 18 important trading partners — let’s put China to the side, because that’s a special negotiation — there’s 17 important trading partners, and we have a process in place, over the next 90 days, to negotiate with them,” Bessent responded, refusing to name any deals or sub deals. “Some of those are moving along very well, especially with the Asian countries.”

Bessent then justified Trump’s chaotic approach to tariffs — announcing and then almost immediately postponing them — by calling it “strategic uncertainty.”

But what Bessent calls strategic uncertainty looks much more like unorganized chaos and lying by Trump as the 90-day pause deadline approaches, and the administration can’t point to a single trade agreement it has successfully negotiated — even though the president claims he has 200 to choose from.