With just 10 days to go until President Donald Trump’s country-specific tariffs are set to resume, the White House appears poised to fall short of the sweeping global trade reforms it promised to achieve during the three months they were on hold.
Agreements with as many as a dozen of the U.S.’ largest trading partners are expected to be completed by the July 9 deadline, top Trump advisers said this week. But if Trump’s only two other accords, with China and the U.K., offer any indication, the pacts likely won’t be fulsome deals that resolve core issues, but instead will address a limited set of topics and leave many specifics to be negotiated later.
"I would expect the White House will announce some number of frameworks that it’s going to call trade deals, but do not meet anyone’s ordinary understanding of that term,” said Tim Meyer, a professor at Duke University law school who specializes in international trade.
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