Trump allies, foreign officials take new Aug. 1 deadline seriously

President Donald Trump this week again extended a deadline for levying tariffs on dozens of countries until the end of the month. This time, the president’s allies insist he means it.

Between the president’s growing impatience with the plodding pace foreign governments are taking and a broader fear about the Wall Street TACO meme suggesting “Trump Always Chickens Out,” Trump insiders privately maintain that it would make little sense — politically or from a policy standpoint — for the president to offer any additional grace, according to four people familiar with those internal discussions, granted anonymity to discuss them.

“On Aug. 1, it’s all kicking in,” said Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist during the first Trump administration. “I’m sure he’s told [Treasury Secretary] Scott [Bessent], ‘There’s no more TACO.’”

Many foreign officials are taking the deadline equally seriously, according to four other people with knowledge of foreign governments’ views of the deadline, granted anonymity to discuss them.

Countries have little choice but to take Trump at his word, looking to appease the president in order to avoid the global economic turmoil that could ensue if he follows through on his many tariff threats — particularly after his April 2 plan rattled world markets and his hefty tariff rates on China in May sent a shock through the supply chain.

While holding firm to the newest deadline could bring the latest phase of tariff discussions to a close, it’s unlikely to be the conclusion to the administration’s trade saga, with industry-specific tariffs on the horizon. Trump is also apt to use tariffs as leverage for everything from getting governments to increase defense spending to having them abandon legislation he considers harmful to U.S. interests.

The president on Monday signed an executive order delaying steep tariff rates from taking effect on nearly 60 trading partners — from July 9 to Aug. 1. The three-week extension gives the administration time to finalize framework agreements with trading partners that are close to the finish line, including India and the European Union, while pressuring others, like Japan and South Korea.

It was the president’s idea to extend the deadline for the trade talks, according to three of the four people familiar, although a White House official said he consulted top lieutenants, including Bessent, in making his decision.

“Bessent is a financial guy. Financial guys are interested in closing deals,” said one of the four people familiar. “And so Bessent liked the strategy the president himself came up with because he thought it was going to help them achieve the goal.”

Trump’s impatience is decades in the making. Since the 1980s, he has fumed about other countries taking advantage of the U.S. on trade, and reciprocal tariffs, as he calls them, were a way to settle the score. But after three months of negotiating, his administration has little to show for its efforts: The U.S. has reached a deal with the U.K., but Vietnam has yet to formally accept a key part of an agreement the U.S. says it has reached with the country; and the U.S.’s “deal” with China is only a framework to continue trade talks.

“If there’s two issues that define Donald Trump, it’s immigration and tariffs … With respect to tariffs, it’s all simple. It comes down to simple fairness — that the United States is the greatest market to have access to, and there’s a sense that we are giving away complete and unfettered access,” said Sean Spicer, who served as press secretary during Trump’s first term. “What I think largely is misunderstood is people focus on deadlines and dates as opposed to results.”

Still, substantive trade deals are at odds with Trump’s effort to erect a tariff wall around the U.S. that will lure back domestic manufacturing and boost revenue. And any deal to significantly lower another country’s trade barriers may require concessions from the U.S. so both countries can sell the deals to their constituents as a win.

But the president’s use of tariffs as a cudgel has forced countries to the table, even those that were originally resistant to making concessions.

After months of talks with the U.S., the European Union is finally dropping plans to levy a tax on digital companies, an important win for the U.S. and a concession that may give the EU a boost as it enters the final stretch of trade talks. The bloc is confident that it will achieve an agreement ahead of the Aug. 1 deadline.

“I think we will have some framework agreement before [Aug. 1],” said an E.U. official, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations said.

The extension also offers time for countries to finalize deals with the Trump administration. Trade talks with South Korea were, for instance, were delayed because of the country’s election, and the additional three weeks may give the two countries time to finalize a framework agreement. The U.S. in a recent letter put Canada on a similar timeline as countries facing reciprocal tariff rates, a decision Canadian officials were happy with, even as the U.S. threatened to bump the tariff rate on the country to 35 percent.

Still, the chaotic rollout of his tariffs over the past four months — and Trump’s wielding of tariff rates as bargaining chips rather than policy positions — has some trading partners skeptical that Aug. 1 is a hard deadline. They suspect he will backpedal over concerns about the market-roiling effects of higher tariffs and the threat they’ll pose to his administration’s efforts to temper inflation.

“Rather than the tariffs actually being imposed Aug. 1, the U.S. will come up with another excuse and postpone again,” predicted a Washington-based diplomat granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of their comments.

The daunting bureaucratic challenges the administration faces to ink bilateral trade agreements with so many countries at once is also fuelling doubts that the latest deadline will hold.

“There’s just not enough time for the negotiations and it’s also extremely difficult to come up with deals that satisfy Trump without sacrificing our own economy,” said a foreign official granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the record.

As part of the talks over reciprocal tariffs, Trump wants countries to adopt anti-China provisions that could provoke Beijing to retaliate. But those countries also worry that Trump could give China a better deal in talks with Beijing, which face an Aug. 12 deadline, leaving them at a competitive disadvantage.

“It’s very hard to kind of walk through all this and to navigate and to figure out how it’s all going to come together and how these different pieces are going to impact you,” said Wendy Cutler, a former senior U.S. trade negotiator, said during a discussion on Friday hosted by the Washington International Trade Association, a group for trade policy professionals.

Ari Hawkins and Doug Palmer contributed to this report.