Schumer jabs Trump for falling short of ’90 deals in 90 days’
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) took a shot at President Trump Wednesday for falling well short of his top trade advisor’s pledge of striking 90 trade deals in 90 days, declaring it another “broken promise.”
“Ninety days ago Donald Trump promised the world that his tariffs would lead to 90 deals in 90 days,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “He makes these promises left and right. He doesn’t care whether he executes them or not, but the American people do.
“By my count, he’s about 88 trade deals short,” Schumer said.
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Trump announced a trade deal with Vietnam on July 2 and reached an agreement with the United Kingdom to cut tariffs on British cars, steel and aluminum in exchange for reduced British tariffs on U.S. imports.
Trump announced on Monday that sanctions would snap back to between 25 percent and 40 percent on 14 countries, including Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia, if deals aren’t reached by Aug. 1.
“What has Donald Trump done? He kicks the can down the road again and again. He talks a big game, but shows little follow-through of strategic understanding of how to secure America’s interest,” Schumer said on Wednesday.
Republican senators say they would like to see the Trump administration make faster progress on trade deals but they caution that trade agreements are complicated and require a lot of time to get done.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee who has kept in touch with the U.S. Trade Representative and Treasury Department, said he thinks more deals will be announced in the next few weeks.
“There are multiple others that are in process that I know firsthand are in process. So there’s work that’s going on,” he said.
Lankford, however, acknowledged that many deals won’t get wrapped up by August and said there would need to be a “resolution” to accommodate longer-term talks.
“There has to be a resolution to try to figure out how long the rest of them are going to take,” he said of trade deals that don’t get put together this month.