(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Trump sends form letters instead of trade negotiations [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-07-07

He said it many times last week, he posted it on Truth Social as well, that he was going to send letters to 200 countries that told them what's their tariff trade deal was. No negotiations, no Trade Representative call, just a fill in the blanks form letter.

Remember when Donald said he was going to have 90 trade deals in 90 days? Well, after dealing with a number of countries, he realized that this wasn't going to be easy. It was going to take a lot of work. That's something Donald can't stand anymore. He has to have his time off for golf, which is exactly what he did on Saturday and probably yesterday, at Bedminster.

He did the same lazy work when he decided to give all of the January 6th criminals pardons. Initially he said that he would examine all the violent criminals separately, or not even give them pardons. It was all supposed to be just for the ones trespassing, and possibly ones doing some damage. But when he looked at the volume he literally said, "Fu*k it. Release 'em all!" Just too damn lazy to do the work of reviewing all the criminal convictions.

He's done the same thing here.

Now we have to wonder if he's sending out all of them at once, or if it's just the 12 that was reported over the weekend.

"UNITED STATES TARIFF Letters and/or Deals..."

Tariff letters alone is what we were expecting. But he's also saying there are trade deals in the letters as well. No negotiations. No communication. Just a form letter letting them know what they'll have to put up with.

"... will be delivered starting 12:00 P. M. (Eastern), Monday, July 7th."

Nice of him to let us know what time zone he's working in. But they're all being delivered at the same time. It's like a blitzkrieg. I guess it's going to be some poor schlemiel ambassador who has to do the dirty work. Trump never wants to spend a dime, unless it's a detention facility out in the middle of the Everglades, so obviously, he's not mailing them.

"Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

Once again it's his now normal third person sign off like we've been paying attention to it, but yes, we have. We just hoped you weren't being serious about doing it this way.

Lately, he's been signing off as "Donald J. Trump, President of the United States" in all capital letters. Unknown, why he decided to change it this time.

Then he fired off a special post to countries that have been working with BRICS. It stands for Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa. There are also BRICS partners, BRICS applicants, and those invited to join BRICS. New members are Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and United Arab Emirates. There are 10 partner states, and 12 who have applied to become members.

BRICS has been criticized for increasing anti-American and anti-western policies. They have been toying with creating their own world reserve currency. Last October they had samples made up. You can see Putin holding one of the samples, and really happy about it.

BRICS summit, October, 2024.

Later, BRICS members said they were not going through with the currency. This would greatly anger Trump, being insistent that the US dollar be the world's reserve currency. He has been angry about China trying to make their Yuan a reserve currency.

Trump's 90 day pause on sweeping reciprocal tariffs is up on July 9th. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that new tariffs would be imposed on Aug. 1st unless unless they make trade deals before then. The tariff/trade letters have that Aug. 1st effective date also.

Bessent said that 100 letters would go out to smaller countries with which we have little trade.

Earlier in the week, Trump was playing TACO with the July 9th deadline. "We could extend it, we could make it shorter. I'd like to make it shorter." Shorter than Wednesday? That means today or tomorrow. That's not happening.

Many are saying there is nothing set in stone in Trump's mind. That this is all an attention getting show. There is a great deal of logic to that. He just loves being at the top of the news, whether it's good or bad. Take, for instance, his trip to Alligator Alcatraz. No purpose to it, just grabbing the headlines that Noem and DeSantis were getting, just like he did the Iran nuclear facility bombings to take the glory from Netanyahu.

Here's the letter Trump sent to South Korea. He put it up on Truth Social. It is a design to embarrass other countries publicly to get them to make a trade deal to our advantage. I've never seen a communication like this to a foreign country made public.

If that wasn't enough, he also put up the one to Japan. The language is almost exactly, if not exactly in both letters. There are some differences in his signature so they weren't signed with an autopen.

Originally, I was just making an educated guess that they would be form letters. Then Trump put up shots of the originals to prove it.

Now we've got a new acronym to use with Trump. FOLD. Form Office Letter Diplomacy. TACO FOLD. Because he will again.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/7/2332150/-Trump-sends-form-letters-instead-of-trade-negotiations?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/