WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday (Jun 11) he would be willing to extend a Jul 8 deadline for completing trade talks with countries before higher US tariffs take effect, but did not believe that would be necessary.
Trump told reporters before a performance at the Kennedy Center that trade negotiations were continuing with some 15 countries, including South Korea, Japan and the European Union.
“We’re rocking in terms of deals,” he said. “We’re dealing with quite a few countries and they all want to make a deal with us.” He said he did not believe a deadline extension would be “a necessity”.
Trump said the US would send out letters in coming weeks specifying the terms of trade deals to dozens of other countries, which they could then embrace or reject.
“At a certain point, we’re just going to send letters out … saying, ‘This is the deal. You can take it, or you can leave it,'” Trump said. “So at a certain point we’ll do that. We’re not quite ready.”
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers earlier that the Trump administration could extend the July trade deal deadline – or “roll the date forward” for countries negotiating in good faith, in certain cases.
A 90-day pause in Trump’s broadest, “reciprocal” tariffs will end on Jul 8, with only one trade deal agreed with Britain and some 17 others at various stages of negotiation.
“It is highly likely that those countries – or trading blocs as is the case with the EU – who are negotiating in good faith, we will roll the date forward to continue the good-faith negotiations,” Bessent told the House Ways and Means Committee. “If someone is not negotiating, then we will not.”
