Deals, Donald Trump’s got ’em.

Although Trump on Thursday unveiled steep levies on a hodgepodge of countries which didn’t get a pact on paper in time for Friday’s cutoff date, it’s probably fair to suggest this week went better than expected on the tariff front.

To be sure, Trump’s “deals” are more accurately described as “understandings,” “frameworks” or simply “moves,” as Bloomberg put it, but he did manage to secure terms, binding or not, that favor the US in bilateral trade.

The most important of Trump’s, um, arrangements — the one markets cared about — was the handshake accord with Ursula von der Leyen struck on July 27, which is to say with plenty of time to spare before Friday’s ostensible deadline.

“Ostensible” because no Trump tariff deadline’s ever actually a deadline, just like no MAGA tenet’s actually an article of faith. Everything with Trump’s a transactional act of expediency. When that manifests as compromise, it’s fine. Desirable, even. When it entails compromising American values, it’s galling. Or worse.

Even the administered rates Trump announced late Thursday in the US — Switzerland was slapped with a 39% duty and Taiwan was disappointed with a 20% levy, to name two — won’t go into effect until August 7, presumably enough time for allies to work something out with The White House.

So, “mission accomplished,” I dare say. Trump convinced pretty much everyone (every country) who matters that trade levies quintuple the 2024 average US tariff rate somehow count as favorable. If all the new tariffs announced Thursday go into effect next week, the average tariff rate will be a little over 15%, up 2ppt from where it stood Wednesday.

Most of America’s major trade partners, exhausted with Trump’s threats and antics, acquiesced to arrangements that entail very high US tariffs and, in most cases, freer access to their own markets for US exporters. The figure below shows the most onerous rate Trump threatened versus the rate the indicated locales agreed to.

My guess is that Taiwan will ultimately end up at 15%, and Switzerland materially lower than the 39% rate Trump menaced on Thursday.

All’s well that ends well? No. Surely not. Trump burned through a ton of goodwill on the way to the “deals” he struck and those deals may not actually amount to much.

South Korea, for example, agreed to the same kind of framework as Europe and Japan, where that means Seoul promised to direct hundreds of billions to projects in the US, with nine out of every 10 profit dollars returned to the US Treasury. It’s hard for me to imagine those sorts of lopsided arrangements panning out. Trump’s basically trying to raise private equity funds except that he doesn’t want to share any of the payouts with investors. That’s both absurd and something he’d do. Or try to do.

As of this writing, India still hadn’t secured a deal with Trump. He likes Narendra Modi — Modi being a nationalist quasi-dictator and such — but probably not enough to give him any kind of sweetheart deal, or even necessarily terms as favorable as Japan and South Korea secured. By the time you read this, Modi and Trump might well have come to an understanding, so I won’t belabor the point. But geopolitically, Trump needs to keep things cordial with New Delhi. I’ll leave that there.

Meanwhile, Scott Bessent came away from another round of talks with Xi Jinping’s envoys “confident” (that’s his word) that a deal between the world’s two largest economies is not only possible, but likely. In a CNBC cameo, Bessent suggested the only thing left to work out are “a few technical details.” Somehow, I imagine there’s more to it than that. The US-China bilateral train can fly off the tracks at any moment. Indeed, Beijing’s suddenly irritable at Nvidia for what China’s internet regulator called “backdoor security risks” associated with chips the company designed specifically for the Chinese market.

As for America’s neighbors, Mexico got a 90-day extension due to “the complexities of a deal,” as Trump put it. He’s taking a harder line on Canada, though, citing Mark Carney’s decision to recognize Palestinian statehood. If Canada recognizes Palestine, it’ll be “very hard” for the US “to make a trade deal with them,” Trump warned.

Why that’s an impediment to a trade deal is anyone’s guess. Wait, let me back up. Everyone knows why it’s an issue. Israel would be aghast. What I mean is that there’s no connection between the two issues at all. If Trump tries to shape Canada’s foreign policy with tariffs, he’ll be doing so at Israel’s behest.

It should be noted that the UK and France are taking the same step vis-à-vis Palestinian statehood. One wonders if Trump will threaten tariffs against Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, or whether this is just another example of Trump bullying Canada because he can. Ottawa learned late Thursday that their rate, pending a deal, will be 35%, presumably with exceptions for USMCA-covered products.

Finally, Trump escalated his fight with Lula in Brazil by sanctioning Elon Musk’s arch-nemesis Alexandre de Moraes and imposing (on a delay) 50% levies on Brazilian exports with carveouts for planes and orange juice, among other key items. Commenting on the risk to Brazilian coffee, one commodities consultant told Bloomberg Thursday that “common sense has to prevail.” Here’s hoping. But common sense ain’t so common, as the old saying goes. And it’s downright scarce in this US administration.