How Many Trade Deals Do We Have So Far?

Back in April, with the 90 day pause on Trump's reciprocal tariffs scheduled to end at midnight on July 8, a Trump administration official suggested they could sign "90 deals in 90 days." At that time, I noted here on the blog that I had said the following on Bluesky: "90 deals seems unlikely, but 5-20 small-ish ones, covering a handful of issues (e.g. transshipment, tech, export controls), is possible."

So now that we are at July 9, how did I do on my prediction? Not that great as of this moment. As I count up the deals, I see the following:

• A U.S.-UK trade deal based on a General Terms document which explains that it "does not constitute a legally binding agreement," along with a series of domestic measures. This lacks a good deal of what we expect from trade agreements, such as a binding legal text and an enforcement mechanism, and is fairly limited in terms of substantive market opening, but I'm feeling charitable so I'll count it as a full trade deal.

• People talk about there being a U.S.-China deal, but there is no published legal text of any sort, which undermines it a bit. As far as I can tell from news reports it only covers export controls, but I did say "small-ish" deals, so I guess this would count.

• There have also been news reports about a U.S.-Vietnam deal that addresses tariffs, and if that one really does exist I would count it, but I need to see some official documents first.

If we get a flurry of deals in the next week, maybe we can count them towards my prediction as well, but given that the negotiating deadline that was set during the original pause has been effectively extended to August 1, that seems unlikely.

So that gives us at best 3 trade deals so far. There may be more coming, but at this point I'm done predicting things and will just wait and see what happens.