Trump's ambitious push for trade deals is hitting some snags

President Donald Trump’s ambitious plan to broker dozens of trade deals with some of the United States’ closest trading partners has begun to show cracks as the clock on his 90-day pause for most country-specific tariffs winds down to just over one month.

President Donald Trump’s ambitious plan to broker dozens of trade deals with some of the United States’ closest trading partners has begun to show cracks as the clock on his 90-day pause for most country-specific tariffs winds down to just over one month.

While some of the fissures are self-inflicted, like recent threats of tariffs against the European Union and higher duties on steel imports, a fresh set of court rulings questioning the president’s tariffs-granting authority now hangs over his entire push to reset U.S. trade relations.

On Friday, Trump announced a plan to double steel and aluminum tariffs to 50%. That followed new accusations against China of violating the handshake agreement the two countries had struck in early May during talks in Geneva.

Over the weekend, the E.U. responded to the steel and aluminum tariffs by warning it was preparing to take countermeasures against U.S. goods. China, meanwhile, issued its own accusation against the United States over the weekend, alleging it had undermined the Geneva pact by imposing new export controls on computer chips.

The increasingly public disagreements over trade aren’t unexpected despite Trump’s ambitious timeline and the optimistic rhetoric from White House officials, former trade negotiators said. Typically, it can take months, if not years, for the United States to work out a trade agreement with another country. Many of the remaining trade barriers on U.S. goods are there for a reason — such as to protect a key local industry in a country or in response to a separate barrier the United States has put up to protect its own goods.