Trump loves to talk up a big game no matter the situation

By the time the US and Japan conclude the first round of trade negotiations, Trump has already said they made "big progress"

If there’s one thing that we’ve learnt from Trump over the years, it is that he loves to talk up a big game no matter what the situation is. Whether his claims hold up to scrutiny is a separate discussion.

And when it comes to boasting about something, or rather anything, it’s best to take it with a pinch of salt.

As the US and Japan conclude the first round of tariff negotiations, Trump said that they made “big progress” in the talks this week. For what it’s worth, he is also “very confident” about a deal with the EU and they would “make a very good deal” with China. Call me a skeptic but yeah, it’s not the first time we see Trump talk up something when the reality begs to differ.

In the case of the tariff talks with Japan, Akazawa was less upbeat about the situation as seen here.

There weren’t any major details revealed but the only thing that seems to be agreed upon was that they are going to schedule more discussions in the weeks ahead. Is that really “big progress”?

We’ve seen this sort of episode before. If you recall back to 2019 when the US and China were discussing the Phase One trade deal, we basically got this wild contrast in communication between Trump and China:

Seems familiar?

Back then, Trump said that they struck “a very large deal” and that “Phase Two will begin immediately”. Meanwhile, China said that they had only “agreed on the text of the deal, which is still subject to legal review” and that “Phase Two will depend on the implementation of Phase One”.

Of course, we all know how that neither side stuck to the deal at all in the end. But putting that aside, there is a precedent for Trump to make a play on words to give out an entirely different meaning to the actual situation.

As such, keep that in mind when reading into the remarks - not just for Japan, but the entire tariffs saga this time around.

Now, I don't doubt that there will be a trade deal between the U.S. and Japan. Again, this is supposed to be one of the easiest battles for Trump to claim victory in this tariffs war. However, the details are going to be the key thing.

Japan was slapped with 24% reciprocal tariffs initially, before the pause. Now, they're facing the 10% blanket tariffs and the 25% auto tariffs separately. The question then becomes which tariffs will go away after both sides strike an accord?

If there is a compromise on other things instead and the 10% tariffs stay the course, that is going to be a tough example for everyone else. While it might seem good that they didn't get hit with tariffs of 24% and "only" got 10%, it's a case of Trump basically hoodwinking the world into believing that is a good thing.