White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said President Donald Trump has seen outlines of trade deals ahead of the Aug. 1 tariff deadline.
“The bottom line is that he’s seen some sketches of deals that had been negotiated with Howard Lutnick and the rest of the trade team, and the president thinks that the deals need to be better, and to basically put a line in the sand, he sent these letters out to folks. And we’ll see how it works out,” Hassett said in an interview on ABC News’s This Week.
Trump said the new Aug. 1 deadline was “firm,” though he has vacillated on deadlines and tariffs since the start of his administration. He delayed his April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs less than a week after they were implemented, setting a 90-day freeze to cap most tariffs at 10% until July 9.
The Trump administration then said they were working on “90 deals in 90 days,” but just around a dozen deals with countries have been worked out in that time frame.
On that, Hassett said, “These tariffs are real if the president doesn’t get a deal that he thinks is good enough, but conversations are ongoing, and we’ll see where the dust settles.”
NINETY DEALS IN 90 DAYS: TRUMP’S TARIFF PAUSE CLOUDS ‘LIBERATION DAY’ ECONOMIC FORECAST
Trump began sending letters last week to countries that had not made a deal on their tariffs in this time. He said his Aug. 1 deadline is “firm but not 100% firm.”
“If they call up and they say we’d like to do something a different way, I would be open to that. But essentially, that’s the way it is right now,” Trump said.