Trump’s Lies About His Trade ‘Deals’

30 July 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Does any of them exist, at all?

Not wanting to say clearly that they don’t, Politico headlined on July 30th “Trump got his tariff hike. The rest remains murky.” However, even that headline overstated his so-called achievement here, because he didn’t “get” his tariff-hikes — he arbitrarily imposed them; no congressional action, and no permission from any foreign country, is involved in any of them, he did (or does) this all by himself, though the U.S. Constitution says that only Congress can pass a tariff into law; it is a legislative (Congressional) function, not an executive (Presidential) function; but Trump pretends to the contrary. And whether this is legal — in accord with the Constitution — or not, is yet to be determined. It might not be (though the heavily Republican Supreme Court will probabably find some word-plays to declare that it is). So, all of his tariffs could come crashing down on account of the U.S. Constitution.

The normal word-play for the U.S. Government to use when doing something that violates the U.S. Constitution is to allege that the matter is a “national emergency.” The Legal Information Institute notes that “The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly grant emergency powers to the President, even in wartime. However, … courts have held that presidential emergency powers must be grounded in legislation.” So, in other words, these non-Constitutional Presidential powers need to be authorized by the Congress in order to be legal — though still actually not Constitutional (except by this unConstitutional ‘national emergency’). This is the kind of self-contradiction-ridden dictatorial Government that a country gets when its ‘news’-media censor-out such realities, and the public accept (instead of revolt to free themselves from) being constantly lied-to (even self-contradictorily by this blatantly unConstitutional means) from that Government, and those deceiving ‘news’ media.

The news-report in “Trump got his tariff hike. The rest remains murky.” tells us that Trump’s tariffs could be

triggering a major trade war. But it’s unclear what else his trade negotiations will yield, despite big promises that he and other leaders are making.

The White House has claimed, triumphantly, that the verbal agreements the administration has reached in recent days with major trading partners like the European Union, Japan, the Philippines and others will result in major new trade opportunities for U.S. industries and unprecedented sums of foreign investment into the country.

But there are already signs that the EU, Japan and other governments can’t guarantee the private-sector investments in the U.S. they have promised, and have competing interpretations of other major provisions of the deals as well.

The disagreements and lack of specifics — or written agreements of any kind — on the trade deals the White House has rolled out in recent weeks are raising doubts about how much Trump has really succeeded in lowering foreign barriers or drawing in foreign investment for U.S. businesses, even as he dramatically expands the protectionist policies that decades of American leaders had sought to knock down. …

Of the six agreements Trump has reached with leading trade partners, only one is signed. The Trump administration also reached a separate understanding with China to temporarily halt an escalating trade war, with a negotiating deadline extended to Aug. 12.

The one signed agreement, inked with the U.K. in May, was also light on details, with the implication that the two governments would negotiate further to implement the high-level commitments they made. For example, the British government is still pressing for the U.S. to make good on its commitment to eliminate tariffs on steel and aluminum. The two countries are also still haggling over restrictions on agricultural goods and other key sectors.

The remaining agreements — with the EU and several Asian countries — have yet to be committed to paper. Instead, Trump disclosed the deals on social media following a phone call or face-to-face meeting with his foreign counterpart, as the White House rushes to meet a self-imposed Aug. 1 deadline to reach deals or impose far higher tariffs on dozens of trading partners. The terms Trump has outlined aren’t always echoed by the other party to the deals.

In announcing the EU trade deal at one of his golf courses in Scotland on Sunday, for example, Trump indicated that Europe would be lowering its tariffs on U.S. goods to zero. But the EU later said it only applied to some products, like commercial aircraft and their components, while tariffs on industrial goods and agricultural products are still being worked out by the two countries. …

Trump said Sunday that the EU would also buy “vast amounts” of American weapons worth “hundreds of billions,” but on Monday, European officials quietly clarified nothing concrete on arms had been agreed.

“Arms procurement is not a matter for the Commission,” one senior EU official told reporters. “This was more an expression of expectation on the part of President Trump that the increased defense expenditure would benefit U.S. defense companies … But it was not calculated in any way into the figures we talked about.”

A senior European Commission official also acknowledged that the EU’s commitment to make $600 billion in new investments in the U.S. by 2028 is “based on the intentions of the private companies,” over which Brussels has no authority. And experts say it will be virtually impossible for EU member countries to purchase $750 billion in U.S. energy, another aspect of the deal reached by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Trump.

Hitting that target would require the EU to triple its U.S. energy imports, based on last year’s figures, while asking American firms to divert all their energy flows worldwide towards the bloc instead — and then some.

“So many terms are left to be discussed,” Daniel Mullaney, a former assistant U.S. Trade Representative who served under Democratic and Republican presidents, said of the deal with the European Union. “We don’t know the details of the agreement. … I imagine it will be somewhat general, and it will indicate a direction for further travel.”

There are similar questions around Japan’s pledge to invest $550 billion in the U.S., a move that Trump heralded as unprecedented. A White House official confirmed that details were still being worked out on the Japan deal.

“It would effectively be an investment vehicle funded by Japan that would be deployed, at the president’s direction, to fund investment in sectors of importance,” said the official, who was given anonymity to discuss details of the deal not yet made public. “This is not a mere commitment for Japan to purchase commodities or Japanese companies to steer investments worth $550 billion into the U.S. It’s Japan fronting the cash to finance most likely private sector projects.”

That’s not exactly how Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba described it in a press conference late last week, where he said the money would include “loans and investments” but did not elaborate further, pending a report from Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Ryosei Akazawa.

“The $550 billion — we still don’t know how it looks,” Kristi Govella, Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a D.C.-based think tank, said in an interview. “On the Japanese side, it seems to be described as more of a company-led endeavor that the Japanese government supports with loans and other assistance.”

If and when the deal is formalized in writing, it will have to win approval in Japan’s parliament, which is not guaranteed, given that the body will soon see an influx of populist lawmakers from the far-right Sanseito party, who won elections earlier this month by promising to focus on “Japanese First.”

“It depends largely on which of these decisions have to go through the legislature for approval,” Govella said of the trade deal. “But it really depends on the details, which we don’t really have at the moment.”

Vietnam, meanwhile, has still not confirmed the U.S. tariff rate that Trump claimed the country agreed to in an announcement he made on social media earlier this month. The White House has yet to release details of the deal with the Philippines the president unveiled July 22, including any clarity regarding a vague promise to “work together Militarily,” as Trump posted on Truth Social.

The Indonesian government, meanwhile, is disputing the claim, included in a White House statement released last week, that it agreed to “remove restrictions on exports to the United States of industrial commodities, including critical minerals.”

That seemed to indicate the government would roll back its ban on the export of nickel ore, which is used to make stainless steel. However, Indonesia Chief Economic Affairs Minister Airlangga Hartarto told reporters in Jakarta one day after the deal was announced that Indonesia would only be exporting “processed minerals,” not the raw nickel ore itself. If true, U.S. steel industry officials say that would make the deal far less significant from their point of view.

In other words: Trump lies about his trade ‘deals’. Although Politico played coy about that in their headline, they were admirably honest about it in their actual news-report.

Trump’s Presidency seems likely to come crashing down in every domain. But his political base still appear to be immune to reality. Even to basic logic. And if enough of his tariffs become institutionalized, supply-chains will have to be restructured all over the world, and this will increase prices globally. And if they become legal in America, then — since a tariff is a tax — U.S. consumers will be especially hard-hit. Trump’s promises of win-lose all over the world (with his “America First” meaning that every other nation loses), will therefore actually yield lose-lose everywhere. Trump said “I run the country and the world.” Biden said “I am running the world.” GW Bush said “You’re either with us or against us.” Obama said “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation,” meaning that every other nation is dispensable. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Something is rotten in the state of America.” It’s not just Trump.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.