Stable Genius Trump Reveals Plan to Get Trade Deals: Mean Letters
Mister “Liberation Day” is suddenly tired of his tariff plan.
The newest chapter in Donald Trump’s global trade rearrangement will look like a series of “very fair” letters that will effectively dictate permitted trade rates with the U.S., the president outlined in a rough pitch on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures.
“We made deals, but I’d rather just send them a letter, a very fair letter, saying, ‘Congratulations, we’re going to allow you to trade in the United States of America, you’re going to pay a 25 percent tariff, or 20 percent, or 40 or 50 percent.’ I would rather do that,” Trump said.
The Trump administration has already extended trade discussions until July 9. Last week, there were murmurings among senior Trump officials that the deadline could be extended yet again, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt describing the hard stop as “not critical.” But on Sunday, Trump didn’t seem sure that he’d need to extend the pause.
“I don’t think I’ll need to. I could, there’s no big deal,” he told Fox. “What I wanted to do is, and what I will do just—sometime prior to the ninth—is we’ll send a letter to all these countries.”
The letters, according to Trump, will be the “end of the trade deal,” suggesting that no negotiations will take place after the White House hits the mailbox. “We don’t have to meet. We understand, we have all the numbers,” he said.
But one provided example did little to evoke confidence in the plan, as Trump apparently forgot the name of Japan’s prime minister: “‘Dear Mr. Japan, here’s the story,’” Trump proposed. “‘You’re going to pay a 25 percent tariff on your cars.’”
Trump: I'm going to send letters, that's the end of the trade deal. I could send one to Japan.
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 29, 2025
Dear Mr. Japan, here's the story. You're going to pay a 25% tariff on your cars, you know? So we give Japan no cars. They won't take our cars. pic.twitter.com/EUkysEFykV
It’s not the first time that Trump has offered to stamp out trade talks by issuing a string of letters. He made similar promises on May 16 and June 11, claiming both times that the letters would be issued in a handful of weeks, though that never came to fruition.
Trump’s tariff proposals haven’t won the U.S. too much negotiating ground. Instead, countries around the world began observing that—rather than playing the waiting game to meet with the White House over potential trade relief—China’s tough negotiating strategy with the former real estate mogul had actually gotten the Eastern powerhouse a significantly better deal.
In the end, it will be America that pays the price when the Trump administration runs out of time on its “90 deals in 90 days” promise. Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that the central bank would wait to see the residual impacts of the country’s new tariff plan before reducing its key interest rate, as companies have already decided to increase product prices this year in reaction to hampered global supply chains.