Deals, but no details: Trump's trade negotiations are big on numbers, light on specifics

President Donald Trump has begun announcing a suite of new bilateral trade agreements.

President Donald Trump has begun announcing a suite of new bilateral trade agreements. The details of the deals — and who, if anyone, stands to benefit — remain largely unknown.

On Tuesday, Trump heralded three new agreements with Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan. The announcements came with no information about enforcement or guarantees, outside of tariff levels stated by Trump — 19% for the first two, 15% for Japan — and promises of eliminating barriers on imports of U.S. products.

Instead, the deals have been overshadowed by warnings from U.S. firms about the impact of Trump’s tariffs to their bottom lines, prolonging a cloud of uncertainty over a U.S. economy already operating at stall speed.

While recession odds have been dialed back in recent weeks, economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal still see 33% odds of one coming within a year, compared with 22% at the start of 2025. Meanwhile, earnings estimates for the S&P 500 compiled by research group FactSet are 3% lower since then, the Journal said.

And even as major stock indexes continue to churn higher to near-records, analysts say the gains are increasingly driven by an ever-narrower band of companies, like tech firms, that are largely unaffected by the tariffs. Reuters reported this week that out of 68 U.S. companies that have provided explicit reactions to tariffs, 26 have issued profit margin warnings, while 24 have announced price hikes.